Your team struggles with ergonomic guidelines. How can you ensure everyone follows them consistently?

All members of the team must have the education and training they need to successfully perform their responsibilities for the ergonomics process. Classroom training should be customized for each role of the team and be performed regularly to improve comprehension and catch up newer members of the team. Classroom training should be followed up with practical, hands-on learning to ensure that team members have learned the core learning objectives and can apply them in a real-world environment.

Start with instructional workshops that outline the fundamentals of compliance and the effects of non-compliance to guarantee consistent adherence to ergonomic rules. Make these sessions interactive to address problems and customize them to particular roles. The staff will regularly implement ergonomic techniques once they recognize how important they are to their productivity and well-being.

It cannot be stressed enough that ergonomics is not just about conducting ergonomic assessments. It’s about making cost-effective improvements to the workplace that reduce injury risk and improve productivity (among many other benefits). Tracking and reporting results is an absolute must. This ensures the ergonomics team is held accountable for achieving tangible results. An effective ergonomics process will impact key OHS metrics as well as reduce costs that affect the company’s bottom line. Is your ergonomics team accomplishing its goals? When your facility achieves a significant safety / ergonomics milestone, celebrate it and recognize the appropriate people.

Equip your staff with the necessary ergonomic tools and equipment, such as monitor stands, keyboard trays, adjustable workstations, and ergonomic seats, to guarantee that ergonomic requirements are followed consistently. Purchasing these things lowers compliance obstacles and demonstrates your team's strong commitment to health and safety.

It's important to monitor the progress of your projects to help ensure that your team completes them successfully and achieves all of the important project objectives. Progress monitoring can be useful to both members of the project team as well as the project manager. Good progress monitoring can help employees stay focused on the project and solve any problems that come up over the course of the project. Additionally, progress monitoring can help project managers keep the project on track, communicate with the project team and monitor important project components like resources, tasks and deadlines.

A feedback loop is the process of getting feedback, acknowledging and responding to that feedback, and then putting it to use. This system turns input (feedback) into output (actions) for your business. As a loop, the changes you make based on feedback will likely inspire new feedback in the future. Feedback can be a powerful tool that allows you to identify problems with your business and remedy them.

Have the Right People on the Team The ergonomics process should by “owned by many.” Involving more people in the ergonomics improvement process brings more expertise and resources to the table. For example, your process can benefit from the input and expertise from many people within your organization such as engineers, supervisors and team members on the shop floor. Yes, team members on the shop floor should be included in the ergonomics process and have representation on the ergonomics team! They are the ones doing the work day in and day out, and they have a “real world” perspective regarding job tasks and physical demands. It only makes sense that they are experts regarding the job tasks being evaluated.