Industrial ERG

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Course Learning Outcomes for Unit

Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to:

5. Examine key management approaches for addressing workplace ergonomics issues.

5.1 Examine team-based strategies to address ergonomics-related hazards.

Reading Assignment

Chapter 6:

Elements of Ergonomics Programs

Chapter 7:

Biomechanics

Unit Lesson

In this unit, we get into the “meat and potatoes” of ergonomics. There is a great deal of very specific

information found in this unit and in the required reading. In Chapter 6, the authors discuss ergonomics

programs, which are broken down into specific categories. In this unit lesson, we will consider the role of the

ergonomics team within the larger context of the ergonomics program. Such programs involve a team effort,

which requires the commitment of top management and the involvement of a range of individuals including

safety and occupational health experts and frontline employees. Employees are actually experts at doing their

jobs and can offer important insight with respect to controlling ergonomic hazards. As your study of safety and

health continues, you will delve into many different facets of safety management systems, and ergonomics

will continue to be an important issue as you move forward.

Consider Amy who works as a cashier for a big-box store. Amy works long shifts standing up and often has to

lean forward to handle merchandise. She is often required to lift heavy boxes out of the oversized shopping

carts or flip them around to find the bar code in order to scan the product. Amy has an issue with her

workstation, and you are summoned to conduct an ergonomics-based hazard analysis of the workstation. Of

course, you are just one of the individuals who will be involved with performing the evaluation; there are

others with specialized expertise whom you can rely on to help you do a thorough job of identifying hazards

and recommending corrective actions.

As the safety professional, the first step will most likely include a cursory analysis of the workstation. Your

focus will likely be that of an occupational safety and health generalist, and you will note any safety and health

hazards that may be faced by Amy and other employees who do her job. Of course, your experience and

education should provide you with a good understanding of potential issues you might face and an

understanding of the specific functions of other experts whom you might want to call upon to include in the

evaluation process should the evaluation be complex enough to require a team approach. For instance, if

employees are sustaining cumulative trauma-related disorders, such as carpal tunnel syndrome or tendinitis,

it may be well-advised to include an occupational health professional such as an occupational health nurse. In

evaluations of complex operations, an occupational health physician may even be involved. The health

professional will have specific training that will allow him or her to look at the potential injuries or illnesses that

might be sustained as a result of working at the current workstation, and the training will also help him or her

to understand what injuries or illnesses might be created by implementation of the recommended corrective

actions. He or she will provide the team with the expertise to evaluate those injuries and may recommend

periodic medical evaluations to identify cumulative trauma disorders early in order to avoid exacerbation of

UNIT STUDY GUIDE Elements of Ergonomics

and Biomechanics

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UNIT x STUDY GUIDE

Title the disorder. It is more than likely this individual will be brought in from the outside of the company, as very

few companies have resident medical staff.

W ith that being said, if the workers at the company are part of a union, it will definitely be worth the time to

have the union representative involved in the workstation hazard analysis and to be available to the

employee. Unions play a very important role in representing workers at many facilities throughout the nation

with respect to workers’ compensation, benefits, and safety and health issues. Someone from management

will also be a part of the evaluation team because the company will surely want to be kept informed of what is

going on with the evaluation and how it may affect the company. If you are working for the company as a

safety manager, you may fulfill this role.

W hen the team starts making suggestions as to how to fix the potential hazards identified in evaluating Amy’s

workstation, the manager will be looking closely at those suggestions and the feasibility of the corrective

actions. Your suggestion might be to provide Amy with very good shoes to help prevent her from experiencing

foot pain and leg fatigue, and those shoes might cost $100; however, there are 2,000 other employees just

like Amy with similar job tasks, and you cannot get Amy shoes without making them available to everyone.

Your team’s fix might cost the company a quarter of a million dollars; therefore, management will want to be

involved in the process to make sure that any money spent is money well spent. A part of the evaluation

process will be to determine the cost savings of the fix versus the potential cost of going without the fix. Be

ready for that.

An industrial hygienist may also be a part of the team and will likely be involved with measurement and

analysis of lighting, noise, and indoor air quality issues. The industrial hygienist may also be involved with

taking biometric measurements. Chapter 7 discusses the biomechanics issue in greater depth. Take a look at

the ideas presented by the authors in the chapter. If you do not have a background in medicine or the health-

related professions, the chapter is quite good at describing the lever, fulcrum, and movement aspects of

biomechanics. As you will note in this reading, there is a great degree of variation between individuals who

make up the workforce. People come in a variety of shapes and sizes. This needs to be considered with

respect to identifying workplace hazards and recommending corrective actions. Raising a work bench to

accommodate a tall employee may cause problems if the next employee hired for the position is only 5 feet

tall!

Potentially, there will be many others involved in the process. It is very common, for instance, to include

frontline employees as they can provide special insight about the job that nobody else will necessarily be able

to identify. An individual from human resources (HR) could be involved as well to deal with issues related to

the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) or to ensure job descriptions reflect appropriate physical job

requirements such as the requirement to be able to lift a specific amount of weight. HR may also be involved

with making arrangements with healthcare facilities such as pre-screening of new hires.

One other person to consider for more complex workstation evaluations, of course, is the ergonomist.

Professional ergonomists are often involved in helping to assess workstations at large manufacturing and

food processing facilities. Some very large companies maintain a staff of full-time ergonomists. Also, it should

be noted that ergonomists do not work in isolation any more than you would while conducting or managing an

ergonomics evaluation. They almost always utilize a team approach that includes many of the professions we

have discussed in this reading and frequently includes frontline employees and industrial engineers as a part

of the overall evaluation process. It is clear that a given evaluation can range from being somewhat simp le,

such as in our present case with Amy, to very complex.

During the evaluation of the teams, there can be a great deal of information gathered to help assess the

relevant ergonomics-related hazards. The information gathered during the evaluation combined with the

company’s injury and illness data and other safety committee findings provides the team with useful data for

identifying ergonomic-related problems. This information is useful for understanding inherent hazards and for

recommending corrective actions for the workstation or job task being evaluated. Corrective actions could

involve anything from recommending footwear, adding floor mats, providing lift assistance devices, adjusting

conveyor heights, redesigning keyboards, allowing other workers to provide assistance for more difficult

tasks, improving lighting, implementing a job rotation, and even providing a stool that would help Amy to get

off of her feet from time to time. Note that this list of controls includes engineering controls, administrative

controls, and personal protective equipment (PPE).

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Of course, managing an ergonomics management team is only one part of the overall management effort, as

you will be able to discern from your readings. Overall, the management program should cont ain much more.

Many standard setting organizations, for instance, recommend high -level management commitment and

involvement of employees in safety -related programs (Pardy & Andrews, 2010). As mentioned above, the

evaluation phase is a good place to involve employees, and employee involvement is very important for

ensuring proper implementation of any management program (Amah & Ahiauzu, 2013). In addition to

management commitment and employee involvement, other important aspects of an ergonomics program

include implementation of controls identified as a result of workplace evaluation and analysis and a periodic

program evaluation to ensure continuous improvement (Pardy & Andrews, 2010). Such a management

approach is also encouraged in a number of industry-specific recommendations from the Occupational Safety

and Health Administration (OSHA) for the control of ergonomics-related hazards (OSHA, n.d.). W e will revisit

this management approach in a later unit.

It should be clear that the main takeaway from this lesson is that ergonomics evaluations frequently require a

multi-disciplinary team approach and serve an important role in the overall ergonomics management program .

This is partly because, unlike a situation where person cuts his or her finger on a metal flange sticking out of a

freshly cut piece of metal, ergonomics hazards are not always obvious. Likewise, when evaluating and

designing a workstation, an opportunity presents itself to make the job tasks as efficient as possible in the

interest of productivity. Employees who are injured or sore as a result of their job tasks are not likely to be

efficient as workers who have the opportunity to operate in a n ergonomically designed workstation.

Individuals who have a wide range of expertise in evaluating workstations and overseeing the implementation

of proper controls helps to ensure the safety and health of workers and optimizes productivity and quality

work.

References

Amah, E., & Ahiauzu, A. (2013). Employee involvement and organizational effective ness. The Journal of

Management Development, 32(7), 661-674.

Occupational Safety & Health Administration. (n.d.). Prevention of musculoskeletal disorders in the workplac e.

Retrieved from https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/ergonomics/index.html

Pardy, W ., & Andrews, T. (2010). Integrated management systems: Leading strategies and solutions.

Plymouth, United Kingdom: Government Institutes.