ErgoBlog - Ergonomics Thoughts
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by Stephen Jenkins
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The ‘ache and pain’ information, is also a god starting point for another metric; knowing and reducing the risk in a group of high-risk jobs. The jobs responsible for aches and pains should be evaluated for ergonomics-related risks. (We use a High Risk Survey or HRS and I will use that as an example) Use a HRS to identify a pool of high-risk jobs. In my last blog I discussed specific standards for ‘our of bounds’ job demands. These standards such as a 51 lb. lift are vital for measuring risk. Select the jobs with the highest risk score from the HRS and establish a plan to reduce risk.
However, if you can avoid the aches and pains route to begin, you are blessed. When you start an ergonomics process, your first steps should be to 1) identify and prioritize ergonomics concerns and 2) begin to solve problems. Your initial problem solutions should focus on low hanging fruit and major issues. The low hanging fruit solutions provide visibility and foster involvement. Solving low hanging fruit makes the workforce aware of the initiative and gets them engaged. It helps drive awareness and momentum. Solving major issues insures you have an impact on injuries. Resolving major issues is generally slower and more tedious, but the results usually have a greater chance to reduce future injuries.
Both of these steps still require a scoring system for ergonomics-related risks you evaluate. A tool like a High Risk Survey remains a good starting measurement tool. This, again, drives an important early metric; the reduction in high-risk scores.
The goal of solutions should be to reduce risk. What decrease in score do you expect? How many jobs will you impact? A goal may include reducing a common risk in all locations. In other words, fixing an issue in one job and then using the same fix in all the other jobs with the same problem. For example, you may find reach and lift risks due to an obstructed storage location of a part that is solved by changing the storage location or removing the barrier. Because this problem occurs at many locations in your facility, it can be resolved similarly throughout the facility. This may sound simple, but solution replication and sharing is commonly overlooked – and that is why it makes a great metric.
This has been a common theme in our writing because is it such a common problem.
The following are oft-repeated scenarios; a H&S professional has to respond to an back injury, or an operator reports wrist pain to a supervisor. In each situation, someone investigates the injury and implements a counter-measure to reduce the risk of recurrence. Often there are many unanswered questions. What was the risk level that caused the pain? Was it the worker or the habits? Where will the next issue occur? Are there other work areas that have similar hazards? Are there lessons that can be used in other areas? How many times have you provided the same information on adjusting equipment - like an office seat – providing the same information again and again. How many people still need it?
Recently I spoke with a corporate group with the mandate to select ergonomics assessment tools. They had detailed criteria for selecting ergonomics assessment tools. When I inquired how they plan to implement, resource, measure and audit, the process for deploying the tools, they had few specific responses. It was assumed that having a tool was sufficient to insure ergonomics success. Unfortunately without expectations and measures to demonstrate that you are meeting expectations, these tools will sit idle as soon as the next priority arises.
It is important to have a great ergonomics assessment tool to react to problems and prevent their recurrence. It is also important to understand that these hazards are predictable. A good assessment tool should quantify hazards to allow you to predict - when you can reliably predict, you can plan - but you need a system to assess the information you gather form these tools to develop a plan.
Most companies begin ergonomics by ‘just doing it’. Transitioning to a planned system requires a process to manipulate data and understand it. The data management has to be embedded in what you do. Over the years of mentoring companies in ergonomics systems we have identified common obstacles in developing ergonomics systems. Identifying useful data using effective tools as well as manipulating and managing that data are two prominent obstacles.
Great companies achieve; recordable rates less than 0.5, repeat injury rates of less than 1%*. If your statistics do not rival these, then you do not have a first quartile safety record. The common thread among these companies - they are more likely to have a standardized, repeatable (read – auditable) process. They can measure what they have done, and how far they have to go. They know where they are going. We have been auditing ergonomics systems for 20 years. It has become relatively easy to identify when a company has a system and when they do not – and how good they are managing their ergonomics system.
Good ergonomics systems have accessible data. The data quantifies ergonomics risks and it is collected in and retrieved from a database. These companies generally use web-based or shared databases. In fact, the best performers use subscription software. Every year our clients win Ergo Cup awards and I try to identify why? Why are they better? One reason - they demonstrate the above characteristics – they have clearly communicated, measurable objectives – and they can show you where they are on the path to achieving them. Can you?
* Self-reported data from 200 companies across all industries.
Good News for Ergonomics
There has been bad news on the U.S. ergonomics front lately - Michigan, NIOSH research grants. Fortunately, there has been some GOOD NEWS as well. The Ergonomics Design Competition for Student Teams and Ergo Cups were recently awarded in Orlando. The energy and success of ergonomics was on display and very evident.
The winning student team from State University of New York were our guests in Orlando. They beat out 19 other student teams to win the Ergonomics Design Competition for Student Teams. There were also 39 teams from industry participating in the Ergo Cup. They represented the best of hundreds of successful solutions that started the competition. The winners are highlighted in this edition of the Ergo Edge, but really, they were all winners. Many had to win internal competitions against dozens of other competitors in their own companies. The participants represented a range of industries, large and small companies and came from around the globe. The innovation, injury-risk reduction and cost savings were impressive. The project costs ranged from a few dollars to million dollar projects that had positive impacts on large groups of workers and the environment.
My take away from these successes – ergonomics and great ergonomics is occurring. We need to keep trumpeting these successes. Please find a way to demonstrate your success – outside and within – your organization. Success stories are the lifeblood of ergonomics.
We don’t often run office ergonomics research studies from retail companies, as we have done with the Staples survey of 150 office workers – also in this Ergo Edge. They often use questionable research methodology – as appears to be the case here. But it is participatory and it does raise interesting challenges and questions for ergonomics practitioners.
It is of interest that a retail firm would take the time, effort and expense to perform an office ergonomics survey. I welcome the discussion. Office equipment manufacturers and suppliers have an important perspective in the ergonomics discussion and have much to add to our understanding of applying ergonomics in the office environment. We need to engage all contributors. What I read here is a summary of what is important to an office equipment retailer – an important contributor to the office setup.
They report, “86 percent of office workers report some discomfort …”. Although we don’t know the population and perhaps the balance of respondents was tipped toward those likely to complain, these numbers are not far off what is reported in ‘comfort surveys’ in office environments.
It goes on to say, “86 percent of office workers report some discomfort from their office furniture and equipment”, which seems to indicate a need for ergonomics. But what is the root of the ergonomics issue for these office users. This is the point in the discussion where many ergonomics practitioners throw their arms in air. What is the response to this information? Is it new equipment? Training? Wellness? etc… This press release focuses on seating. Is that the culprit?
How do you come to the conclusion that someone needs a new seat? What constitutes an ergonomics chair? These questions generate long lists of responses. As an ergonomics practitioner, I believe it starts with understanding what the person does in the seat. Nowadays, office computer workstations have almost as many variations as industrial workstations. Just about everyone in an office uses a computer, but the use, setup and applications vary immensely. As a result their ergonomics needs vary dramatically. The seat is just one item in a series of links – and it may not be the broken link. Prescription without diagnosis is malpractice.
If you asked these 150 respondents what constitutes an ‘ergonomics chair’, what criteria do you think they would provide?
We are highlighting this study because it will likely get lots of press. Probably more than all the good works of thousands of ergonomics practitioners working daily to solve workplace problems. I don’t like that at all. However, it indicates that we ergonomists need to know how to market.
Shortly after that, OSHA staff in a stakeholder teleconference announced that the MSD checkbox – that once existed on the OSHA log – would not be making a comeback.
“The U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration today announced that it has temporarily withdrawn from review by the Office of Management and Budget its proposal to restore a column for work-related musculoskeletal disorders on employer injury and illness logs.“ There will be no MSD checkbox.
In one week a state said providing ergonomics guidance is too much of a burden on business AND the federal government agency responsible for health and safety stated that they don‟t want to know the size of the problem. I am stunned. These two distinct events are, to me, more in a series of setbacks for ergonomics in the U.S.
The U.S. ergonomics community is growing in numbers, but its impact seems to be in decline. Two decades ago, U.S. government-funded, research agencies were world leaders in ergonomics. The U.S. produced leading edge and far-reaching ergonomics that could be applied in the work setting. Today is a different story. The Revised NIOSH Lifting Equation is almost 2 decades old. The ANSI Z-365 – Control of CTD’s was incubated in 1992, produced in draft in 1995 and in 2003 had its support withdrawn, and has never been released. (I would be remiss if I did not add one happy note; my colleague, Tom Albin, did successfully shepherd the ANSI/HFES 100-2007 Human Factors Engineering of Computer Workstations through to publication.)
Meanwhile many other countries, including developing countries have introduced many standards, directives and guidance documents. Some jurisdictions introduce multiple documents every year. It makes me wonder if the U.S. will soon be following other countries‟ guidance on ergonomics.
I, like others, in the ergo field have seen the issues that arise from a lack of ergonomics. I have had the privilege of seeing MSD statistics and records from many firms around the world. And they are there. I have also trumpeted the benefits of ergonomics. One of those benefits is the ability to help businesses be more competitive. However, I don‟t think that message has made it to the Governor of Michigan – or many others for that matter.
How do you feel about the phrase; “ there is not a scientific basis that supports the writing of the proposed musculoskeletal disorders standard”. And that ergonomics “is not based on good data, good science or sound technology.” Those phrases have appeared many times in print in the U.S. in the last 20 years. I appreciate the rigors of science. I appreciate we cannot definitively state that a hazard is a risk, nor will we know the probability of an MSD in a given work situation. However, we can approximate MSD risk a lot better than anyone – including ourselves – gives us credit for. I think this lack of credit goes a long way to explaining the lack of credit given to ergonomics in public policy.
I am not advocating for any particular response. I am asking us to stand up for our profession and for the science of ergonomics.
I am not an advocate of „overreaching’ regulations. (However, – tongue in check - unlike the governor of Michigan, I think regulations should be mandatory for those they cover.) However, let‟s consider the aspect of competiveness. Lack of ergonomics in companies is a net loss. Companies with poor ergonomics have injury related costs. They also have issues with production, skill retention, quality and so on. Many leading enterprises have understood and used ergonomics to improve this situation for years. Why is ergonomics not good for all businesses? Shouldn‟t public policy help companies be competitive? I think there is a happy medium – some reach that would benefit business and promote ergonomics.
“OSHA withdrew the proposal “to seek greater input from small businesses on the impact of the proposal and will do so through outreach in partnership with the U.S. Small Business Administration‟s Office of Advocacy.” It may be the mechanics of the checkbox, but it seems that if large enterprises benefit from ergonomics, small businesses will benefit from it on some scale and in some way. We are talking about a checkbox, not an ISO Audit system – which many of these stakeholders likely already utilize. Can‟t we at least identify what and where to help decide if and how.
What is the fear of identifying MSD‟s. One argument, it is a precursor to a regulation. That may be true or false. But not knowing the extent of an issue does not assure a regulation will not arise – particularly in the multinational business environment in which we now exist. Our ergonomics regulations may be those that already exist in another country. Not measuring a problem like MSD‟s just means we won‟t know the extent of the problem any better.
Like many things, much of the leading-edge knowledge in ergonomics now resides in private enterprise and is proprietary. Many U.S. companies have ergonomics processes that far exceed any regulation. We need to continue to find ways to promote – on a much larger scale – the benefits of ergonomics. Most of the working population remains uninformed or ill-informed about ergonomics. And now it is a negative thing in the U.S. public domain. Ergonomists need to reclaim leadership in the profession.
I recently met with the Director of Occupational Medicine for a large multinational organization. He did not believe ergonomics was effective. Thirty years after the original NIOSH equation was released, the U.S. is in an ergonomics backslide.
De Quervain’s tendinitis has been around for a long time. De Quervain’s is an inflammation of the tendons of the muscles that move the thumb back or away from the hand that can be debilitating and painful. It was originally associated with industrial jobs that require excessive thumb forces and extreme thumb postures. More recently, trackballs used on computers and smart phone keyboards have been considered culprits. Very recently I discovered a new culprit. Physicians have begun to see an increasing number of De Quervain’s cases in new mothers. This week, the Wall Street Journal was the latest to report on Mommy Thumb.
It has been reported that Mommy Thumb arises when a parent picks a child up in a manner that the thumbs absorb the weight of the child, such as when you pick up a child under the armpits. (It is just not Mom, but Mom is 4 times more likely to suffer thumb pain than Dad.) Physicians and researchers suggest that lower cribs and playpens, heavier infants and older parents all contribute to the increasing number of thumb pain cases. Modern technology, like smart phones are considered contributing factors.
Medical practitioners are starting to advise parents in ‘safe’ child handling techniques to reduce the strain on thumbs; supporting infants heads with the forearm, lifting with cupped hands and so forth. Seems like ergonomists and ergonomics trainers have another story to add to our conversations. I do have to wonder if the computer technology is getting enough attention in this whole story?
Blog November 1, 2010
You may have seen these ‘toning shoes’ – I am usually late to notice new fashions, so you are probably way ahead of me. The makers of toning shoes have lots of ‘research studies’ (read ‘marketing research’) to show these shoes burn calories and as a result promote weight loss and tone muscles. Some claim these shoes replace a workout. That would get lots of attention all by itself and it has. From the front page of USA Today to the web pages of the major news networks, toning shoes have gotten attention. Unlike the manufacturers, the news outlets comments have ranged from skeptical to downright negative. According to the American Council on Exercise, ‘claims that the shoes make a gym obsolete are "definitely far-fetched." I have to put myself squarely on the highly skeptical to negative end of the spectrum –I could not advise anyone to buy OR wear them at work.
So what is good about toning shoes? As the shoemakers say, wearing them would make your leg muscles work harder and likely promote weight loss. They are heavier and increase the range of motion of your muscles as you walk – thereby increasing muscle activity and calories consumed. So if they succeed with this, why am I not promoting toning shoes? First, they change the way you walk. Walking is an unconscious or automatic activity. We don’t think about it. Changing the way we walk requires that we think about and relearn an unconscious activity. Safety research indicates that this is an accident waiting to happen. We risk an unsafe act when we have to think about or relearn an automatic activity. Second, the shoes are unstable. The rounded soles increase our risk of slips, trips and falls. There have been documented cases. Third, heavy weights on the ends of our legs change our gait pattern. This alone has received considerable negative feedback from the medical and scientific community as possible cause of joint pain. Fourth, shoes in general have come under fire for reducing the natural shock absorption of our foot and particularly the longitudinal ligament in the arch of the foot. Placing the foot in a direction opposite of the arch’s natural orientation, as toning shoes are designed to do, could increase the stress on the arch and compromise its shock absorbency. Finally, the studies that support toning shoes are self-sponsored study. I found no independent research that supported them.
Personally I hope toning shoes are a very shorted-lived fad. Hopefully they are not a decade long debate like back belts. I hope these shoes will fad away and hopefully, before they create too many problems in the workplace.
I would be very interested to hear if anyone has or will be creating workplace policies regarding toning shoes andr how this will fit into your current footwear policy. Thanks for your thoughts.
Presenteeism could be costing you money.
The term “presenteeism” is the opposite of absenteeism in the workplace, leading those without adequate sick leave to show up for work in the physical sense, but remain slightly absent in the cognitive sense. So, how does that benefit the employer? Well…actually it doesn’t benefit the employer OR the employee OR the co-workers.
It’s a little like running on only 3 of the 4 cylinders in your car. Focus and attention to the details of the job are often minimized or lost. Costly mistakes may occur, and some may not be so easy to solve if they involve customer service or quality control. Look around your own company and consider all the ways that inattention might damage your bottom line to truly evaluate how “presenteeism” might be more of a problem than you first imagined.
So what do you do? Here are a few ideas to get your started. First, survey all of your manual handling and office jobs to identify which ones are most likely to be problematic if the physical demand and cognitive workloads are high. Second, prioritize your “at risk” jobs and make them your priority to evaluate in detail and resolve. When the workload better matches the capacity of the worker, the effects of “presenteeism” are minimized. Third, based on the details you collect, find a way to assign people to jobs for which they are both trained and physical capable of performing to keep people at work while minimizing the “presenteeism”.
Cost of Ergonomics / Cost of Accommodation
Scanning on-line newspapers reveals many issues, but often it is the angle chosen to tackle an issue that intrigues me. ‘No Cookies at Faculty Meetings’ to illustrate hard times at Harvard University is in my top ten. Doesn’t Harvard have a multi-billion dollar endowment? Workplace health and safety, disability and other occupational health-related issues are creeping back into the U.S. news. This may be fueled by the national health care debate here in the U.S., but these issues have a life and tone of their own. An article in the New York Times; Disabled Workers; Employer Fears Are Groundless encompassed all these occupational health issues. The subtitle sums up the article; “Studies show that hiring the disabled does not lead to higher accommodation costs, worker comp, or sick leave, yet these myths persist.” This is great news – and likely long known information for most professionals in this field. We, the occupational health professionals, need to trumpet this fact. Employers need to understand that fitting the job to the worker or accommodating the worker is not an expensive venture - but rather a cost-effective venture. Many management books promote having the best talent to be the best company – this seems pretty obvious. (Read Good to Great for a prime example of the need for a great team in any workplace.) Talent is not defined by the person’s physical size or physical ability or mental ability. Constraining your talent pool by limiting it to employees that are strong or large or any other singular demographic, makes it harder to find people who can the job well. It makes it harder to have the best talent. This is not new. Neither is the fact that accommodation does not have to be expensive. We did a study and found that more than 50% of ergonomics-related issues were resolved for less than $1000. We can and need to break the myth that ergonomics and accommodation are expensive.
Ergonomics Tools in Business
Gridlock Implementing Change - is it Altman's Law?
Stuart Altman of Brandeis University, a veteran of health overhaul efforts under presidents Nixon, Carter and Clinton observed that everyone’s second choice has been the status quo. Everyone has their own ideas and they're very invested in those ideas and when others disagree with those ideas, the second choice is the status quo and that's why you end up with the gridlock. Many experts believe that most of the public and health care interest groups are willing to go along with 80 percent of the agenda, but they simply can't live with 20 percent of the agenda. And the critical problem is, everyone has a different 20 percent.
This tendency toward status quo has been called Altman's law.
Most of us in ergonomics have seen this same phenomenon in trying to enact change in the workplace. Very few argue with the logic and need for a sound ergonomics fix. However, getting the fix implemented, if it impacts very many people or costs very much is very difficult. I think Altman’s Law helps to explain why this occurs. As barriers and compromises must be made to finally reach a workable solution, we can easily reach a point that we no longer want to compromise, and busy lives and inertia brings us back to status quo.
Altman has identified several things that help to avoid status quo gridlock. Labeling alternatives to accentuate their positive attributes helps steer the decision away from the status quo. We need to use simple terms to explain ergonomics tools, processes and outcomes. The solutions and their rationale need simple labels – labels that can be understood by all parties in the workplace.
Part of increasing the simplicity includes decreasing the number of attributes or alternatives. Altman states that adding alternatives negatively effects making a choice and increases the chance of status quo being maintained. Many times I have seen workplaces freeze in the implementation stage, unsure of which alternative to choose.
It goes without saying that good ergonomics is simplified when there are clear labels and few choices. In other words, a path with few turns that comes with clear directions. Moreover, it is critical that we include not just the science of ergonomics, but that we carry this thinking over to the workplace processes that utilize ergonomics.
Stephen Jenkins
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Ergonomics - In employers we must trust
We continue to hear a lot about ergonomics regulations in the US. Michigan is fully engaged in trying to enact a rule and there is plenty of news to come from there. As I wrote earlier in this blog, there is plenty of energy - both pro and con - for ergonomics regulations. I often look at other aspects of life for parallels - and the salmonella in a Georgia peanut plant - certainly has me thinking. The FDA will be pressured to respond to problems in the food supply. We expect our food to be safe and it is a societal breach of trust when food is not safe. My kids, my spouse, me, we all eat peanut butter. We like to think there are checks and balances in place to keep our food safe.
Well I am sure you know where I am going with this. Workers have a similar expectation or trust - they expect a fair wage for a fair day's work. When a dastardly employer - and I know there are dastardly ones because of FDA reports on the tainted peanuts - puts an employee in a risky job that employer steps outside the bounds of trust. There are many employers that this is not directed at. And that is the catch. I don't think anyone wants to unnecessarily burden good employers. But how do we ensure the ergonomic equivalent of the salmonella at the Peanut Corporation of America does not occur? The company knowingly (allegedly) shipped tainted product and people died. It is not OK to knowlngly hurt anyone. It is not OK to assign someone to a job on which others have gotten hurt.
Stephen Jenkins
What should OSHA do for ergonomics
It has been almost 2 weeks since the election of Barrack Obama as President of the US. The lead up to the election has gotten ergonomics back in the news. Ergonomics had virtually disappeared in conversations from Main Street to Wall Street in recent years. The recent upsurge in media coverage can be credited to both proponents and opponents, the former raising the need for and and the latter the travesties of, respectively, ergonomics. The common pro arguments of worker protection and the cons of ergonomics equated to a pseudo science will be pitted against each other in the months to come.
There was controversy, even in the ergonomics community, over the 2000 Federal OSHA regulation that was repealed by the CRA in 2001. The range of criticism was as vast as what was and was not included in the ergonomics regulation. Perhaps we in the ergonomics community need to take a page out of the President-elect’s page and find a bi-partisan approach to ergonomics. OSHA’s mandate is to protect workers. How can they promote and support ergonomics and meet this mandate? We would love to hear from you – how should they achieve this goal? Is an ergonomics regulation the best response? Are there other responses that OSHA could reasonably assume within their mandate? What is the counter-argument to the statement that MSDs are more a function of psychosocial than physical ergonomics?
Stephen Jenkins
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Justifying ergonomics
How do you justify maintaining an ergonomics process or continuing to pay for an Ergonomist in your facility or corporation? At some point in the management hierarchy your job and success reducing injuries is translated into cost - benefit. If you use injury costs, they are often inadequate to justify even the cost of a low 5-figure project. As I pointed out in my last blog – once injury costs are controlled what do you use? Another dilemma, Ergonomists and ergonomics are often housed in H&S or EH&S so they are held accountable only for injuries. Most of other folks in EH&S deal with regulatory issues – things a company has to do. These issues are a cost of doing business. So the Ergonomist is in a unenviable position – or are you?
Ergonomics is not just about injury prevention – those are firefighting or system failure issues. Ergonomics is truly about human performance. As a human performance specialist we should focus on gains; production gains, quality gains. Let me know, if you have made this transition.
Stephen Jenkins
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Cost of ergonomics
Cost related to ergonomics has been a frequent conversation over the last few weeks. With these economic conditions it is very understandable why that is. I have heard cost discussed in 3 different ways; how do you control costs, what if you can’t find any costs to control and how do you measure gains. All are interesting topics and I will try to touch on each over the next few blogs.
Most of us start ergonomics programs aiming to control costs – generally injury costs. When we are successful, we are left with a dilemma. There are no more injury costs left to justify our existence. Have we truly worked ourselves out of a job! At that time we often start to search for indirect cost savings, savings related to injuries but not directly due to the injury – costs like absenteeism, hiring and training and what not. (As an aside, I don’t care much for the term indirect costs – they are what they are – costs. But more on that later.)
There is a much bigger question tied into this, what does it cost to maintain a low injury rate. Perhaps that is the question with which management is truly struggling. We fundamentally believe it should cost less to maintain a system than to purchase it or bring it under control. Think about this in your own life, with your house or your education – buying or renovating / upgrading should cost more than normal day-to-day living if things are under control. So how do you justify to management what it should cost to maintain ergonomics in your company or facility? Why should they continue to pay you at the same rate if the injury rate is down? Let me know your thoughts….
Stephen Jenkins
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Managing the ergonomics system II
Thanks for the feedback and comments on the last blog. As I suspected, there are a multitude of great ideas and approaches out there. Many folks described how they interact with management and find themselves translating science to communicate with others in the workplace. Many folks appear to be confronted by the management dilemmas – and some keen observations made. I will get into many of these …..
How to provide management with a documented process they can assess and rationally set budgets for was often described in emails to me. A colleague from HP described the difficulties marrying subjective data that workers describe - such as comfort or morale information - with the hard financial data required by management. This challenge of comparing ‘soft qualitative data’ with ‘hard financial numbers’ is common.
One of the few accounting models that marries ‘soft data’ with ‘hard numbers’ is a ‘Balanced Scorecard’. Companies that use a Balanced Scorecard have placed company-specific values on human resource issues. I have seen several variations of Balanced Scorecards, but only a few that included ergonomics.
Whether your company uses a Balanced Scorecard or not, you can turn soft ergonomic data into hard numbers. We have been exploring the idea of risk quantification – and this implies holistic and consistent quantification - for many years. It also implies that you measure risk. You may measure risk in concert with other ‘soft’ measures such as comfort, fatigue or morale, but you need to measure and quantify risk. Quantifying risk to manage risk is one of the common traits of world-class ergonomics systems.
Next time I am going to explore how risk quantification and budgets can be linked, but until then please keep your thoughts coming – they are inspirational.
Stephen Jenkins
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Managing the ergonomics system
We have the luxurious opportunity to discuss many issues with folks who have deep insights into ergonomics. Most days, someone in some corner of the world poses a question or raises an issue that gives us pause to think. These conversations are what make our job interesting and exciting. Issues ranging from risk to injury and from managed systems to training teams are discussed in our office, over the phone and through the internet.
Rather than repeating these questions and discussions over and over, I am going to raise them through this blog. This will allow you to weigh in with your thoughts on these issues and raise the bar on the discussion so to speak.
Lately we have had frequent discussions on managing ergonomics – and what that means. And believe me, it seems to have far ranging meanings. One thing does appear clear, that we in the ergonomics profession have matured from trying to do laboratory-like research in the workplace to being expected to consistently produce results in a predictable fashion. For us practitioners with roots in science and research this can create a dilemma. How do we overcome this tension between science and business. It seems that one requirement is a repeatable process that provides consistent data across a wide variety of situations. In other words, it seems like we need convergence in the way we do things so it can be explained in the same way over and over again to different people. Unfortunately very few folks can claim to do this. Or at least I haven’t talked to many. This may why Eastman Kodak was so impressive. They had a consistent methodology and process for ergonomics. The voluminous and ahead-of-their-time books spoke to this detailed process. However, it would be interesting to know if such an approach would stand up in today’s need for continuous improvement and ever-shorter improvement and change cycles.
I could continue on this theme for a long time. I will stop for today. Next blog I will continue on this theme of the business of ergonomics – unless someone raises a more exciting discussion over the next few days.
Please chime in. Contact me and add your thoughts.
Stephen Jenkins