The Value of Ergonomics for your Business
By Mary Dunlap, CIH Ergonomics, defined simply, is fitting a job to a person to reduce the risk of strains and injury to muscles, tendons, and ligaments, also known as musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs). The human costs are the best reason for preventing MSDs, but the financial burden to businesses cannot be underestimated. A 2018 survey of days away from work from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics determined that 30 percent of cases were due to MSDs and that MSD cases require 38 percent more lost time days than typical injuries and illnesses. The direct costs associated with a sprain, strain, or hernia type injury can cost a business between $28,000 and $32,000 for medical treatment to resolve the injury. However, the medical costs are only part of the story and do not include indirect costs such as work stoppage, overtime, training of new employees, legal costs, and increased insurance premiums.
What are the benefits of ergonomics programs?
In addition to keeping workers healthy, there are many added benefits to implementing an ergonomics program that ultimately can make a business more profitable and attractive to potential business partners, highly qualified new employees, and outside investors, including:
Reduced costs associated with treating MSDs
Reduction in lost workdays and the length of long-term absences
Lower employee turnover and costs associated with replacing an employee
Higher employee engagement and focus on work quality
Increased productivity and efficiency
Reduced costs for correcting defects
Creating a safety record that is attractive to lenders and outside investors
When ergonomics is regarded as an important part of the operational process, employee engagement is enhanced, as is productivity and work quality. When an employer places value on the ability to perform the job comfortably and efficiently, employees feel respected. From this respect, workers are much more likely to be engaged in their work. With this engagement, comes regard for the quality of work they produce and a willingness to participate in improving processes and performing the work more efficiently. It has been estimated that even a simple improvement can result in a one-percent increase in quality and a five-percent increase in productivity. As attention to detail increases, the defect rate goes down and, with that, the costs for correcting the defects. Safety and sustainability have become very important aspects of how companies operate and are key environmental, social, and governance (ESG) indicators that lenders and investors consider when assessing business performance, assigning corporate credit ratings, and considering new investment opportunities. It is common practice for investors and lenders to request disclosure of injury rates. The top 29 companies that have earned safety culture awards have been found to consistently outperform the S&P 500 stock index.
What are the risks of workplace injuries?
The major risk factors for musculoskeletal disorders are:
forceful exertions involving with lifting, lowering, carrying, pushing, and pulling
repetitive movements, encountered when job cycles are less than 30 seconds long and when the cycle is repeated two or more times in a minute
awkward postures that result from poor equipment or the workspace design, not having the right tool to perform a job, and lack of worker awareness of how to properly move and position their body when performing a task.
Of these factors, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has estimated that 25 percent of non-fatal occupational injuries result from forceful exertions primarily associated with material handling. The costs associated with treating MSDs can be significant when an injury occurs. Such injuries often result in multiple trips to a doctor or clinic, physical therapy appointments, and even surgery. In addition to treating the injury, lost workdays and sometimes long-term absences create staffing issues which increase overtime costs and losses in production. Additionally, job duties sometimes require modification to accommodate an employee who has been injured. When job tasks remain at risk for injury, there are not only lost workdays directly related to injuries but often there is also an increase in “casual absenteeism”. When strains or injuries are common, workers simply do not want to do the job. As dissatisfaction increases, so does the rate of employee turnover and the costs for replacing an employee. On average, it costs a business 20-50 percent of an employee’s salary to find and train a new employee replacement.
What is included in an ergonomics program?
Ergonomics programs and tools can make a big difference in the comfort, safety, and well-being of workers as well as add money to your bottom line? Actions can range from the simple to the complex and may include:
Implementing a daily stretching program for employees
Frequently rotating workers that perform repetitive jobs during a shift
Providing work surfaces that are the right height for the job
Reducing reach distances for parts or tools
Providing the right tools and equipment such as lift assist devices
Designing new workstations and equipment to best fit workers and their job tasks.
Coach and train employees how to properly position their bodies when lifting and performing tasks to avoid strains and injuries.
Further information
Cornerstone’s Health and Safety department can perform a Worksite Analysis to observe operations, job tasks, and work practices for ergonomic safety. As a Certified Industrial Hygienist, I can provide reports of risks, prioritize areas for changes, and recommend control measures. Contact Cornerstone at info@corner-enviro.com or on our website for more information. Mary Dunlap, CIH, is a Senior Industrial Health and Safety Specialist and Certified Industrial Hygienist. She works with Cornerstone’s clients to develop exposure assessment strategies tailored for their work environments. She regularly performs ergonomic assessments using a variety of OSHA and NIOSH tools to rate severity of risk for work related to musculoskeletal disorders.
Recent Posts
Using Leading Indicators to Prevent Workplace Injuries
By Joshua Sampia All companies have an obligation to create a safe work environment that allows their employees to do their jobs with minimal risk of injury. Most business understand their obligation to report accidents and illnesses to government agencies at the federal, state, and local level. What if you could use modern technology and trends to not only create a safer work environment but also prevent injuries from ever happening? This would save you time and money from completing reports, medical billing, and insurance claims, as well as reduce lost work time hours.
What are leading indicators?
Leading indicators are data points that can help predict future events and trends. This is where having a proactive safety culture comes into play. Leading indicators can be used to assess workplace culture in order to develop safety plans to minimize risk and increase productivity. OSHA defines leading indicators as “proactive and preventive measures that can shed light about the effectiveness of safety and health activities and reveal potential problems in a safety and health program.” The cost of worker’s compensation claims can range from thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on the nature of the incident. Having a program in place that can help prevent even one of those claims will automatically pay for itself. There also are many other intangible benefits like reduced costs for worker’s compensation insurance or a reduction in the number of fines. As the saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Set Goals for Leading Indicators
Most companies have goals set for lagging indicators, such as a threshold for lost work time or number of injuries; however, your organization should also set goals for leading indicators, such as:
Attendance Rates
Safety Observations
Risk Assessments
Preventative Measures and Maintenance
The key to any good program is setting, identifying, and reaching quantifiable goals. For example, we work with a company that had historically relied on lagging indicators such as types of injuries, location, and work task to track injuries. Our team worked with them to implement a more observational approach focused on minimizing future occurrences. They formulated daily observation checklists of employees to determine if they were performing their tasks in an efficient and safe manner. That daily observation data was then aggregated and analyzed develop better safety and training programs. The change has helped reduce the number of injuries and accidents. Incidentally, productivity has also increased. Implementing this kind of process does not have to be a time-consuming process. The daily observations are short checklists of yes or no type questions that take approximately two minutes each day to complete. The checklist can be completed on mobile devices which most staff are currently using in their work tasks. The company also can share observations across multiple departments and shift supervisors to create a network of data for the entire business.
Technology and Software for Worker Safety
There are other examples of using modern data technology to help. Tracking employee training is a great way to ensure a good safety environment. Making sure employees are well-trained and that training is up to date is crucial to safety success. Another important aspect is that you must have a robust program in place to capture and analyze the data. A good system will:
let you easily capture all this information through multiple devices and portals
let you report the data back into multiple formats and reports
have a great dashboard to see a visual representation of the data
improve accountability
It is also critical to have traceability so it is clear who entered what data and when. This is extremely important when it comes to having a chain of evidence.
How can Cornerstone Help?
Cornerstone’s Incident Management and Training Tracking systems can capture all of this information as well a provide data reporting, visual representation, and more. Our applications have highly customizable systems that can adapt to literally any industry including automotive, manufacturing, medical, industrial as well as retail and warehousing. Each system is configured to each company’s specifications and requirements. This can also be accomplished at a cost-effective price point, especially when compared to the cost of having one accident on record. Contact us for details on how Cornerstone can help your facility establish an effective safety program using leading indicators and our industry-leading software systems.
Joshua Sampia is the Director of Product Development. He is responsible for the applications development team at Cornerstone, ranging from web based and mobile applications to device management for safety and environmental compliance and applicability.
Recent Posts
Where the S in ESG Intersects with the HS in EHS
By John Scifres Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) rating is all about the long game. Industry has learned if they are to stay in business and thrive in today’s world, they must be sustainable in all facets of their culture. For our Health and Safety Division, the “social” portion means offering our client’s the best tools to take care of their workers. Today, compliance with Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) regulations is a given and employers are expected to go beyond compliance in their worker safety efforts. The links between employee health and safety, morale, loyalty, and retention are undeniable. Healthy, happy, loyal, and experienced workers make for a sustainable business. Today’s investors know this and demand it from the companies they want to back. Cornerstone helps to improve ESG metrics by maximizing worker health and safety with a stepwise approach from assessment to training.
Assessment
The first step in our Health and Safety Management System services is a baseline assessment of Compliance to get the feel for where a company is in the spectrum from Compliance to Sustainability. It is a Gap Analysis of sorts, but it gives our experienced evaluators a feel for what they have to work with. We present our clients with a detailed report of regulatory applicability including a finding of compliance or non-compliance for each element. For those areas that need work, a Findings and Corrective Actions Summary becomes a compliance punch list that can be attacked quickly and systematically to bring the site into compliance. We can couple a Compliance Assessment with a Culture Assessment to dive even further into needed actions to improve the “S” in ESG. Either along with or as a result of the assessment, Cornerstone then begins the task of evaluating worker health and safety hazards and their risks with a Risk-Based Workplace Hazard Assessment. The goal of this is to assess each job and its component tasks to determine the hazards present. Our evaluators determine the risk of negative outcomes from each task by judging the Severity and Probability of the negative outcome. They assign a numerical score to each and the product of those gives us a Risk Level for each hazard. Of special note is our Ergonomic focus. A critical part of workers’ health and safety is how they feel and move while accomplishing their jobs. Using the risk assessment data our ergonomics team monitors employees in each workstation to ensure a practical solution to complex ergonomic issues.
Control
Generally, we determine an acceptable risk level with the client and anything exceeding that level requires action. Our staff then determines required or recommended controls for each hazard. We use the U.S. OSHA Hierarchy of Controls to guide this part of the assessment. In the end, Cornerstone Health and Safety Evaluators produce a prioritized list of necessary controls. Those hazards with a higher risk level demand more urgent action. Controls often include the development of administrative policies, procedures, and programs. Cornerstone works hard to develop these along with stakeholders at every level of the company. The information gathered during previous steps guides this process. It can range from something as simple as protective gloves to Injury and Illness Prevention Plans and the establishment and facilitation of Health and Safety Committees. Worker Health and Safety training and coaching are integral to making these Administrative Controls come to life.
ESG Reporting
While the methods to arrive at an ESG rating differ, they all have the same end goal in mind; to identify those companies that consider their human resources as a long-term investment in their success. Data from government reports of compliance, worker injury audits, and worker experience of every sort regarding compliance and culture all play into ratings. Everything we do helps our clients prove to the world through ESG score that they are a sustainable business. This is never more evident than in our approach to worker health and safety. We carefully determine compliance gaps, rate the risk of everything done at a client’s operation, and then work closely with all levels of employees at the facility to ensure that compliance obligations are met, hazards are controlled, and workers go home at the end of their workday in the same condition that they arrived. And, we do this over time with the overall goal to continually improve all factors that play into an ESG rating.
Further Information
As ESG reporting becomes more vital and more publicly transparent, Cornerstone’s industrial health and safety experts can help ensure that your programs and data are ready for the spotlight. Contact us at info@corner-enviro.com or through our website.