CSSE Learning: Innovative Design for Health, Safety, and Performance

Using innovative design principles and practices to improve and enhance health and safety and performance in the workplace is the best way to keep workers safe, healthy, and on the job.

On May 19, 2022, the Canadian Society for Safety Engineering (CSSE) British Columbia Lower Mainland chapter hosted a webinar on innovative design for health, safety, and performance. Gina Vahlas, from WorkSafeBC, and Era Poddar, from the Manufacturing Safety Alliance of BC, gave an informative presentation on how creative design principles can be used to ensure health and safety in the workplace.

The importance of ergonomics: The human factor

Ergonomics is the scientific discipline concerned with understanding interactions between humans and other elements of a system in order to enhance well-being and overall organizational performance. It is the key, overriding factor in ensuring health and safety for people at work. In essence, using good design in the workplace makes it easy for people to do the right thing. It envisions humans as key assets and technology as a tool to assist them.

The workplace system

Understanding the importance of workplace systems is also an important part of designing for health and safety at work. Vahlas and Poddar outlined the interconnected nature of a workplace’s facilities, equipment, and overall environment with the organization and the people working within it, and how keeping a workplace’s system top-of-mind when designing for health and safety is crucial.

Keeping a workplace’s system top-of-mind when designing for health and safety is crucial.

Return on investment

The presenters also highlighted the return on investment that employers can earn when they pay attention to good workplace design. Evidence from multiple sources suggests that a good health and wellness program and well-designed, ergonomically sound workplace systems can have a return on investment (ROI) as high as 15 to 1. This ROI is achieved through such benefits as improved performance, increased efficiency and productivity, reduced accidents and injuries, and improved job satisfaction, among other things.

The design process

A focus on the design process was the heart of the webinar. Vahlas and Poddar emphasized the need for an iterative, or step-wise, process that moves from discovery through planning and defining, to ideating, creating prototypes, and then testing before implementing.

The importance of four key factors in the design process was outlined, and examples of each were explored:

• Physical: paying attention to awkward postures, repetition/duration, force, local contact stress and the physical environment.
• Cognitive: considering where something can go wrong (for example, too-similar labeling, reliance on memory, lack of user-friendliness).
• Perception: understanding how the way we see things can change depending on what’s in front of us, as well as on our knowledge and expectations.
• Organizational: keeping in mind the importance of communication, work pace/workload, job control, reporting systems, and more.

The importance of using universal design principles that are equitable and flexible was also examined.

The take-away

The presenters wrapped up this informative session by emphasizing how “designing it right, from the start,” is the most important part of implementing an innovative design process for health and safety in the workplace. Ultimately, the goal is optimize both worker and organizational performance while keeping workers safe and healthy on the job. Organizations can achieve this by using the design process to develop solutions that work in each workplace, and involving workers at every stage of the process.

?