Ergonomics - Great for Employees. Better for Business.

As a Human Resource or Risk Manager, should you do anything about ergonomics?

Questions & Answers

• Have you done the minimum required by OSHA to protect and educate your employees regarding Ergonomics?
• Does your HR Department know how to screen and train new hires regarding ergonomics?
• Are your company health insurance premiums going up every year in part from preventable orthopedic problems with your employees?
• Have you spent significant dollars on new office furniture and workstations, but not reviewed how the workstations fit your employees?
• If your workers comp carrier asks you what you are doing to prevent injuries, can you say you have an ergonomics program in place?
• Do you have problems with absenteeism?
• Do you have employees suffering from carpal tunnel, thoracic outlet syndrome, etc., but not even know it?
• Research suggests that Injury Risk is 20% Work Design and 80% Worker Habit. Keeping this in mind, what have you done to train/educate your employees on correct habits?

Regulatory Compliance

Regulatory compliance is a major factor of ergonomics programs. OSHA requires specific recordkeeping for occupational illnesses including cumulative traumas, manual materials handling, workplace design, heat stress, and situations of human errors. OSHA also expects businesses to respond to areas with high incident rates. Violations are dealt with seriously, and failure to respond to high incident areas can result in “willful” citations.

Insurance Requirements (Health & Workers’ Comp)

An insurance carrier for a business may require action be taken in response to growing claims. Most common are injuries are to the back (manual material handling) and/or upper extremities (from cumulative traumas) in both office and industrial settings. When claims are high compared to previous claim history, Experience Modifier rates can double and triple the Workers’ Compensation premiums.

Value and Corporate Responsibility

At Back To Work, we pride ourselves on creating value for your organization, and individualize our presentations and one-on-one assessments to fit your business needs.

Implementing Ergonomics practices in your business is a good way to demonstrate corporate responsibility to your employees, customers, and shareholders.

Cost Justification

Using ergonomic analysis and training to prevent and manage injuries.

Case Scenario:

A law firm with 300 employees wants to prevent work injuries (specifically repetitive stress injuries – RSI’s) and improve individual employee ergonomic awareness and work process. The solution included employees taking an OSHA approved ergonomic self-assessment which was then followed by an office ergonomic education presentation given on several different days so all employees had the opportunity to attend. These presentations impacted approximately 200 employees in the workplace. Additionally, 30 individual ergonomic assessments were performed (20 short form and 10 long form).

To determine the ROI for this client, the average cost per workers’ compensation claims (indemnity) for RSIs in Florida was used ($34,627). This cost was multiplied by the number of ergonomic evaluations conducted (30) times 0.50, anticipating that without the interventions at least half of these would likely have gone to the insurance company as workers’ compensation claims or at least resulted in lost time and productivity. The total invested in this employer’s 2006 ergonomics process including consulting, training, ergonomic analysis and products purchased was $20,214. ROI was determined as follows:

Based on the average costs per claim and the investments made in the program, the employer demonstrated an ROI of $25.69 for every dollar invested in employee training, consultation, and individual ergonomic assessment.

When an employee spends 6-10 hours per day seated in front of a computer monitor, that employee’s awareness of his/her workstation ergonomics becomes increasingly important the longer they are employed with you. If an employee does everything wrong ergonomically, and has an improperly set-up workstation, the question is not if there will be absenteeism due to pain, strain, or sprain, but when! If that same employee shifts some of his/her work practices and becomes aware of how to correctly set up and adjust his/her workstation, the risk of injury goes down dramatically. An office worker complaining of a stiff, sore or painful neck and/or shoulder condition may only need to raise monitor height a few inches to reduce/eliminate the forward leaning posture partly responsible for many neck and shoulder sprain/strains.

ERGONOMICS - The natural next step to your company’s wellness program.

ERGONOMICS = SMART ECONOMICS
Most ergonomic interventions are High Value/Low Cost. Consequently, OSHA would probably disapprove of operations that were not modified because the cost of an injury was less than the cost of an improvement.

Call us today to learn what Ergonomics can do for your company!