Implementing an ergonomic program

Responding is Julia Abate, executive director, The Ergonomics Center, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC.

Congratulations! You’ve just been given the responsibility of creating the ergonomics program at your facility!

Where should you start? Should you tackle known issues right away? Should you train all employees, create an ergonomics team or buy some analysis software?

Many organizations rush out and execute short-term initiatives that may serve an immediate purpose. These initiatives ultimately die out as they lose momentum. To create a proactive culture that includes ergonomics, it’s important to start with a written policy that’s supported by organizational leadership.

Creating a new program can be overwhelming – especially in the field of ergonomics, where there are no specific standards to guide you. However, just like any other business project, the best place to start is to create a plan, or in this case, an ergonomics policy. Establishing a written policy generates conversations with organization stakeholders to define goals and should create a roadmap to reach those goals.

Key components of your ergonomics program should include:
Leadership commitment: Establish expectations for leadership by identifying how it will support the program and remove roadblocks. What leading and lagging metrics will be tracked to prove program effectiveness?
Employee involvement: Outline how employees should be engaged and participate in the program success. Will you have a participative ergo team?
Policies and procedures: Define and document processes that require consistency, such as expectations for identifying, analyzing and controlling risk.
MSD management: How does the ergo program work to integrate with your current management of musculoskeletal injuries?
Education and training: Identify specific audiences, content and renewal frequency for ergo training. How are the training programs managed?
Risk identification and reduction: Delineate the process for identifying and resolving risks both reactively and proactively. What process should be followed, including the tools that should be used? Control implementation and funding processes should be outlined.
Program compliance and continuous improvement: Systematically evaluate whether the program is being implemented successfully. What are the next steps for growth?

A successful program has elements that are both proactive and reactive to start, but eventually transitions to a more proactive overall approach. Reactive program elements involve improving existing processes while prioritizing work areas that already have experienced worker injuries. Reactive projects can be used to help gain buy-in from leadership and build employee trust and involvement. If your program contains only reactive elements, which are initially important, it won’t flourish long term. Proactive program elements, such as training engineers to design future products and processes around the capabilities of the workers, will help create a culture that identifies opportunities to reduce or eliminate ergonomic risk before workers are injured. By designing work for the employee, organizations will also see improvements in productivity, quality, employee turnover and other key performance metrics.

No matter what your initial catalyst is, make sure you take the time to create a plan for your ergo program. As Alexander Graham Bell once said, “Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.”

Editor's note: This article represents the independent views of the author and should not be considered a National Safety Council endorsement.