Office Ergonomics Risk Management

2011 corporate injury databases show a substantial growing amount of high lost-time injuries now occur in the office environment. Cumulative Trauma Disorders (CTDs) often account for more than 90% of office environment injuries.

While the severity of a CTD is significantly reduced when addressed early, unfortunately, late intervention includes significant direct medical costs and the indirect costs can be ten times that or more.

You can only go so far before having to share the responsibility for practicing good ergonomics with your employees.

You adjust workstations in an earnest effort to induce neutral postures.  You provide training to teach Office-Ergo basics.  You have the attention of the employee for a time and then your employee returns to their workstation, their deadlines, their stress, their work - and their previous long-lived work behaviors.

But can anyone evoke a positive long term behavior in someone else, such as practicing good ergonomics (posture and pacing) while working on the computer, without active real-time positive reinforcement? 

Almost 100 years of Applied Behavioral Analysis clearly proves that without Operant Conditioning it's extremely unlikely.

The Top 10 Mistakes in Behavior Change:

1. Relying on willpower for long-term change.

2. Attempting big leaps instead of baby steps.

3. Ignoring how environment shapes behaviors.

4. Trying to stop old behaviors instead of creating new ones.

5. Blaming failures on lack of motivation.

6. Underestimating the power of triggers.

7. Believing that information leads to action.

8. Focusing on abstract goals more than concrete behaviors.

9. Seeking to change behavior forever, not for a short time.

10. Assuming that behavior change is difficult.

            Source:  Stanford University

Our clients' success largely comes from sound mainstream ergonomics, their professionals' expertise and open-minded consideration that the job may not yet be complete after the employee's workstation has been optimally adjusted and the employee finishes their Office-Ergo training course. 

Using Applied Behavioral Analysis and Operant Conditioning, implemented gently and effectively through ErgoSuite Enterprise, our clients successfully nurture and foster these vital, positive and important behavioral changes.

For a moment, let's shift our focus from "mitigating risk factors" to "managing risk". 

Within office ergonomics, "mitigating risk factors" includes interventions of various types (workstation adjustment, employee training, etc...) all singularly purposed to foster employee behaviors such as working in neutral postures and taking microbreaks while working.

We know well that the top risk factors are awkward posture, recovery time, force, repetition, duration, contact stress and optics.

In the bigger picture, on the other hand, the elements of "managing risk" include risk factor identification, regular repeated measurement, prioritization and finally intervention to mitigate specific risks.

You are probably well-aware that in order to effectively manage any business process you must measure it. This is a fundamental keystone of business process management.

You, as an experienced professional, can make excellent and effective decisions, however, your decisions will only be as good as the information you base them on.  Furthermore, "your" success is rooted in your stream of decisions over time.

Let's examine why data-driven office ergonomics supports and enriches our decision making process and resulting success.

Let's look at two employees:

- Employee #1, a moderate computer user, using a well-adjusted workstation, has completed the company's Office-Ergo training course.

- Employee #2, a somewhat light computer user, has been through the same Office-Ergo training as Employee #1 and has had their workstation perfectly adjusted.

Which employee has a lower risk profile?  Which is the employee who may be tomorrow morning's surprise new injury case with perhaps 90-180 lost work days coming?

The correct answer is that you don't have enough data to make a good decision. 

You may guess that one risk factor, repetition, may be slightly elevated for Employee #1 but by how much and what about duration?  What about posture, recovery time, force, contact stress and optics? What about the activities each of these employees engages in outside of work hours?

To effectively address the question of who needs priority attention, we need to have more information (data). 

Since we know the risk factors (awkward posture, recovery time, force, repetition, duration, contact stress and optics), we need to measure these things to systematically, proactively and effectively identify elevated risk cases.

Yes, if you had the time and only a few employees, you could do a daily walk-about, observe and survey every employee on each of these risk factors. 

In reality however, it's challenging, if not impossible, to adequately measure these things in real-time without ErgoSuite Enterprise.

Our clients' solid success comes from sound mainstream ergonomics, their professionals' expertise and open-minded consideration that the job may not yet be complete after the employee's workstation has been optimally adjusted and the employee finishes their Office-Ergo training course. 

Using both retrospective and fresh real-time measurement of office ergonomic risk factors, implemented simply, effectively and automatically through ErgoSuite Enterprise, our clients' dramatic success has been driven by their ability to successfully identify risk "very early on" based on real data. 

In this way, our clients effectively and proactively intervene, allocating their scarce precious resources precisely where they're needed most and where they have both the lowest cost of intervention and highest success rate.

Fortifying Camp Ergo

A reasonable metaphor illustrating how this side of ErgoSuite Enterprise works is the example of a military base (your organization) located somewhat near enemy territory.  The enemy (injuries) can make surprise appearances at any time. 

Up to now, you've periodically sent out scouts to locate the enemy, which in your case includes performing periodic workstation assessments and surveys.

ErgoSuite Enterprise, however, is your active real-time radar platform, always running, which identifies where the enemy is coming from - long before it reaches your camp.

About half of our clients had excellent world-class office ergonomics programs in place, although that's not required for ErgoSuite, long before using ErgoSuite Enterprise yet they still experienced injuries. 

They discovered ErgoSuite Enterprise to be an effective early warning system which helps them in their efforts to reduce office ergonomic injuries to zero.  That is their goal.

As a partner, we help clients set up this automated system which you control and which operates based on your business rules. 

With ErgoSuite Enterprise it's very easy.  With ErgoSuite Enterprise, you can turn on your Risk Radar today and see what's coming much earlier - so you can address it early on at the lowest cost and highest likelihood of success before it knocks on your door.

This is action-based active risk management designed to minimize your overall risk profile.