Ergonomics, A Safety Program's Best Friend

Through all the controversy about Ergonomics Programs, I have remained a devout proponent of having an Ergonomics Program, for much more than the obvious reasons. My Ergonomics Program at Exabyte Corporation has been functioning for seven years and is driven by injury reduction/prevention far more than regulatory compliance.

As I studied ergonomics and became a practitioner on our employees, I strove for "early intervention." Even with limited experience and knowledge, it became obvious that if I heard of an employee having wrist pain, numbness or tingling, I had an opportunity to prevent those symptoms from becoming worse. Through the years I found that I could often prevent the employee from needing medical attention or physical therapy, if I had an opportunity make simple but relevant changes to their workstation.

I thought this was pretty amazing, since with typical injuries like a laceration or fall, I am in no position, after onset, to mitigate the severity by "managing" the circumstances surrounding the injury. I am hard pressed to conjure another workplace injury that triggers by broadcasting warning signs which can be overcome by simple solutions when discovered early.

One of the most helpful aspects of my early attention to ergonomic problems was to work closely with the medical providers once an employee did require treatment. Lately, I have witnessed an encouraging trend in occupational medicine where the medical providers regularly recommend ergonomic evaluations as part of the treatment.

Six or so years ago such injury related ergonomic evaluations were performed by our medical provider for as much as $400 and were necessarily after the injury had escalated to being serious.

Observing the process and results from those evaluations prompted me to further learn about ergonomics so I could successfully perform ergonomic evaluations for our employees on a larger scale. The resulting expansion in my ergonomics program brought "ergo evals" to employees much earlier in symptom development, saved Exabyte the additional claim costs from medical providers, and affected one other extremely valuable, but unforeseen, aspect of my safety program, as I will describe:

I launched an active and on-going campaign to perform ergonomic evaluations of employees in any work environment. A number of departments asked that I evaluate every employee. I found, to their delight, that even with limited skills and equipment, I could always make some modification to enhance their comfort. You can still see 1995 phone books under computer monitors as a remnant of my initial solutions. This little perk, as well as just receiving some attention, seemed to be 100% effective as measured by their satisfaction.

My average cost for ergonomic equipment in the first two years, which established our budgeting criteria from then on, was $75 x 25% of the employees to be evaluated that year. Therefore, evaluating 80 employees a year would cost $1500 in ergonomic equipment, with phone books helping that average.

I recall some pretty mind numbing exercises of common sense solutions like merely moving an employee's table six inches away from his adjacent desk in a garage-sized office so he had more "elbow room." This employee was unexpectedly impressed and praised my "knowledge of ergonomics" as he found it easier operate his mouse, now that the obstacles next to him were merely moved away!

But that is my important point here. My ergonomic program has an underlying benefit that helps me every day. Employees who have had an ergonomic evaluation have, without exception, enjoyed a positive experience from our "safety program" and become unknowing allies. By spending a short amount of time with an employee, learning a bit about what they do (which always arises from examining their work behavior), I have become a closer work associate through a relaxed 20 minute visit to their work area.

I now find that my requests for safety related changes are received with much more interest, confidence, and perhaps obligation because of the very tangible assistance I have provided them, or others in their group.

I do ergonomic evaluations on about 10% of our 800 employees per year, and in many cases I might not have had any other occasion to work with them, even though I am responsible for their safety. Meeting them and then making them more comfortable in their work establishes a significant rapport which promotes the visibility of the Safety Program and the Safety Manager very favorably.

To facilitate this practice and develop opportunities for evaluations, I attend New Employee Orientation every Monday where I spend 20 minutes on safety with my personal invitation to evaluate the ergonomics of their new work area. These visits have often revealed a preexisting condition that is helpful in ergonomic injury prevention and claim management.

So, not only are ergonomic concerns a hazard you can manage and reverse with early intervention, but they create an amazingly easy way to win sincere support for the safety program as a whole!