Why Evaluate Ergonomic Management Systems?

Far too often people associate an audit in a negative context.  Audits are not a tool used only to police a workforce but audits are intended to identify improvement opportunities within an organization’s compliance scope. 

Audits are first and foremost a verification program (Cahill, 2001, p 19).  They verify the existence and use of adequate systems competently applied.  An ergonomic audit program should be designed to verify that ergonomic management systems do, in fact, exist and are in use. 

The program should be adequate, in that they should acknowledge and respond directly to the organizational guidelines that define compliance or liability (Cahill, 2001, p 19).  The systems should be applied, meaning the procedures should not be out-of-date or out-of-use. And finally, the systems must be applied competently. 

All site managers, ergonomic analysts, and unit operators should have an awareness of what defines ergonomic compliance, and conduct responsibilities accordingly. 

Audit programs are designed to meet one or more of the following objectives (Cahill, 2001, p 19):

• Assuring compliance with regulations or in-house (ergonomic) guidelines
• Determining liabilities
• Protecting against liabilities for company officials
• Tracking and reporting compliance cost
• Increasing ergonomic awareness
• Tracking accountability of mangers

What is an Ergonomic Management System?

ISO defines an Ergonomic Management System as “that part of the overall management system that includes organizational structure, planning activities, responsibilities, procedures, processes and resources for developing, implementing, achieving, reviewing, and maintaining ergonomic policy.”  In this context an ergonomic management system contains five elements:

• Ergonomic policy
• Planning
• Implementation and operation
• Checking and corrective action
• Management review

These elements are all in line with the plan-do-check-act cycle of the Total Quality Management System.

In its simplest form, ergonomic management systems should focus on reduction and elimination of ergonomic risk factors rather than on detection and corrective action after an incidence/occurrence.

Why Evaluate an Ergonomic Management System?

According to Cahill, (2001) “Focusing on management systems allows one to identify the underlying or root causes, as opposed to the symptoms, which are typically at the heart of noncompliance at a site” (p 395). 

Consider an auditor who observed an operator lifting and carrying 45lbs of raw sheet metal at a high frequency.  Given the ergonomic risk factors noted by the auditor, it was recommended that the operator be given a hoist device for lifting and transporting the sheet metal.  The site and the auditor believed this would eliminate the issue. 

However, does this address the root cause or merely the symptom? What if this same type of observation was made one year later on a different job?   The auditor failed to address the underlying cause of the problem.  It resurfaced as a result of a breakdown in an ergonomic management system.  The underlying root cause of the problem may have been attributed to a variety of reasons including, but not limited to, the following:

• This was a newly setup job and no ergonomic assessment was ever completed for the job task and workstation setup.
• This was a newly setup job, but the job changed after the initial ergonomic assessment.  A new ergonomic assessment was never performed.
• A hoist was initially available to the operation, but since it was not being used by the operator it was taken down.  Why was it not being used?  If deemed not functional by the operator, could enhancements have been made to make it more user-friendly?
• Heavier sheet metal was added to the operation.  The operator made informal complaints about the difficulty in lifting and carrying the sheet metal and nothing was done to address the complaints. 

This issue takes a new light when looking at the possible underlying root causes.  The solution is more complex than instructing the site to provide the operator with a hoist device. Before a new operation is setup, an appropriate ergonomic analysis can be used to identify recommended weight limits for the lifting condition identified, or it can be used to identify an appropriate lift assist tool.  

Another solution may include implementing a more effective change management process for new/modified jobs which accounts for a cross-functional approval process when something like a hoist is removed from an operation. By remedying the true problem it is less likely a reoccurrence will resurface a year later during the next audit.    

Conclusion

Evaluating how effective an Ergonomic Management System is within an organization is just as important as establishing the Ergonomic Management System itself.  An audit can identify gaps in the Management System that may then be corrected to optimize its impact and effectiveness on mitigating ergonomic risk factors for the organization.

References

Cahill, L. B., Kane, R. W., Vetrano, T. R., Mauch, J. C., Gold, M. E., Meloy, M. M., Riedel, B. P., Michelin, L. B.  (2001).  Environmental Health and Safety Audits.  19, 395-397