Ergonomic Evaluation

What is an ergonomic evaluation?

Ergonomics is helping people improve efficiency.  This is done by adapting a job to the person performing it.  The goal is to allow for more work with decreased strain on the individual.  An ergonomic evaluation is simply an ergonomic specialist looking at your worksite to improve productivity and safety.

How can ergonomics help me?

An ergonomic specialist can assess your work environment and identify safety and efficiency issues.  Workplace injuries reduce employee efficiency by taking them away from the job.  Injuries increase cost directly due to workman’s compensation claims and indirectly due to lost productivity.  More than just preventing injury ergonomics helps employees accomplish more.  By identifying inefficient work patterns or work sites a specialist can offer solutions to improve employee productivity.  Solutions can be an alteration in how a task is done, a simple modification to the work site, or additional equipment.  Our goal is to help your employees be safe and do their job better.

What kind of things are risk factors for workplace injury?

• Static positions, anytime a person is in one position for a long time it can cause discomfort and possible injury.  Positions can be anything from sitting, standing, bending, or even lying down.
• Repetitive movements, if someone is repeating the same task all day it can start to wear on them.  This can be anything from typing to working an assembly line.
• Excessive noise, vibration, temperature or lighting issues.  We don’t always think about these but they all play a role in workplace safety.
• Heavy lifting and awkward lifting, anytime a lot of force has to be produced by a person, or they have to do a job at a difficult angle or hard position they are at greater risk for injury.

How can I handle the costs of ergonomic equipment?

Ergonomic equipment can be pricey, even just an office chair could cost hundreds of dollars!  How can anyone afford that?  Luckily you don’t always have to get the fancy expensive specialized equipment.  Our specialists can help you find alternatives to improve your worksite without breaking your budget.  It is possible you already have equipment on hand and you just need some creativity to implement it. 

In those more rare cases where equipment does need purchased it helps to compare the cost of a potential injury to the cost of the equipment.  If your employee were gone even for just a week what impact would that have on your business?  What would the impact be on that employee?  

How can I get an ergonomic evaluation done for my worksite?

Contact our office, we’d love to talk more about what we can do to help.  Feel free to call or email us with your questions.  You can tell us more about specific tasks, sites, or employees that you feel are at greater risk.  We can schedule a time to come out and visit your work.  We also offer OSHA compliant evaluations with accompanying documentation.