Are the New Ergonomics Guidelines a Good Job Analysis?

by Ian Chong, CPE

I've been asked to review the new OSHA Ergonomic Protection Standards (Guidelines and included Risk Factor Checklist) and to comment on whether they are adequate for a good job analysis. At first glance it appears that in business applications, they are presented in a regulatory mode rather than something developed by the government, designed to help businesses become successful.

As a business owner, if these guidelines are your first contact with ergonomics, an immediate and negative perception may occur that such Guidelines including the job analysis (guideline words) checklist is all that there is to ergonomics. A New York Times article (Waving Good-bye to Ergonomics - 16 April 95) illustrated many such colorful viewpoints concerning business and OSHA (hindering vs. helping).

Picture this, you are a Plant Manager in a manufacturing facility in small town USA and your boss back at corporate in bigtown USA tells you to implement an ergonomics program to reduce your incident rates. Assuming your are interested in keeping your job and you have been rewarded (in the annual pick-up truck drawing) for low incident rates, you obtain a copy of the OSHA Guidelines. Your first reaction is that they are geared towards pain/symptom identification. You panic, because with symptom and pain identification defining incident rates, those rates are likely to go up and your job may be on the line. After all, didn't you just implement an ergonomics program?!

In a panic, you view none of this favorably. You categorically dismiss ergonomics and determine that only consists of pain identification, which you perceive is another duty/job/time consuming activity. As a good soldier, you will begrudgingly do whatever you can to appease the powers that be in whatever spare time you have to devote to ergonomics. Bingo! Ergonomic Guidelines just became a nuisance rather than a help. They interference with your productivity schedule and fill up your mind with regulations you don't have time for. You can't see how any of this will help your organization make more money. If something like ergonomics program detracts from the bottom line they certainly aren't worth worrying about

Ergonomics (Guidelines) should be perceived as governing more than pain and injury. Ergonomics can significantly enhance productivity and quality. Pain is only one symptom of a bad workplace. There are others. Already the Guidelines are presenting ergonomics (to the uninitiated) as primarily pain identification. A poorly designed workstation is poorly designed, whether it produces pain or not.

Bill Brough,CPE of Washington Ergonomics in Seattle, feels "To be a truly good ergonomist you have to offer more than just regulatory enforcement . You have to be sensitive to business. In this manner, as a truly good ergonomist you don't wait for injury, you have to address fatigue before it turns into something that really affects productivity and quality. Ergonomics is an activity which should be used by many, not an art or science practiced by a only a few.".

Quality Assurance used to be the watchdog for Production. With new wave business operations like TQM, quality becomes linked arm in arm with production and production becomes its own quality check. The same should be true for ergonomics. It should be linked with the various disciplines in the operations arena, not just assigned to its own independent checklist. When was the last time an industrial engineer approached a bio-mechanist or nurse in the medical management department to get viewpoints on extended reach to design a layout or machine? Conversely when was the last time a medical professional approached an engineer to understand why an at-risk posture was needed? Both scenarios usually get someone's attention after injury, at which time someone gets the checklist out.

The above scenarios are true, we have witnessed them. The Guidelines have a potential to shine in the occupational arena. Business organizations don't need a program, they need superior quality and improved safety to be more competitive. The Guidelines are a means to do this, however it appears that they need to be couched in a manner which makes real sense to a plant manager who needs to see the benefits within 30 seconds of picking up the1/2 inch thick Ergonomics Guidelines. A plant manager should be able to pick up the Guidelines and shout "Hey these are great, just what I needed", not "My Gracious, not more regulations to follow".

Whether only a job analysis or not, many elements in the Guidelines draft are wonderful, however, they are difficult to digest in their present form. The emphasis would be better placed on "what ergonomics can do for you", encouraging users to embrace the concepts and to use them to the benefit of the workers. At the very least, The Guidelines should impart a sense of common purpose and philosophy to ergonomics issues.

The checklist included can be used to indicate what is wrong, but doesn't tell us why, nor what to do about it. You, as a Plant Manager, still have to figure this out on your own. The Guidelines Checklist should, however, encourage you to start thinking about putting together a checklist of your own.

By itself, the Guidelines Checklist probably won't give a good job/task analysis since it is too broad in its application to: frequency, range of motion, position and posture. (Consultants probably won't need it because the parameters of deliverables are different for each project.)

There is a wonderful enlightening statement (buried in the appendix) on the fallacies of incident rates (for effective measurement) and severity. This should be in the front of the Guidelines instead of buried in the back to get folks to think more "big picture" about ergonomics and their benefits instead of primarily symptom identification.

These things need to be highlighted and presented in a more palatable manner for the business setting. Perhaps hype is a good way. The Super Bowl is just another football game, but the hype makes sports fans think it's the century's greatest event. The Guidelines have the potential to really put ergonomics on the map and get them embraced by those empowered with the authority to change the trauma inducing workstations. Isn't that the main purpose of the Guidelines in the first place?

Ian Chong, CPE is Principal of Ergonomics Inc. in Seattle, WA. USA.. The firm has over 20 years of experiences providing ergonomic solutions to both public and private sector companies. For more information please contact us. 

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