Ergonomics Assessment

What Is an Ergonomics Assessment?

An ergonomics assessment, also called an ergonomic risk assessment or workplace assessment, is a process used to evaluate the risk of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) due to a mismatch between workplace design and employee capabilities. Once physical risk factors are identified, steps are taken to systematically improve the work environment for employees. The goal is to improve employee well-being, job performance, and job satisfaction.

Why Do an Ergonomics Assessment?

MSDs are a leading cause of workplace injuries and illnesses, accounting for as much as one third of all injury and illness costs. In fact, just one ergonomics related injury can cost between $60,000 and $80,000. More importantly, ergonomics interventions can improve your employees’ health and quality of life. On average, good ergonomics have been shown to:

• Reduce errors and workers comp costs
• Increase total productivity and individual productivity
• Decrease absenteeism and lost workdays
• Cut the need for professional care

Who Needs an Ergonomics Assessment?

Ergonomics assessments are the first step in the job improvement portion of your ergonomics process. In order to make workplaces safer and help control the risk of workers developing musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs), you need to find where those risks exist and how much workers are exposed to them. If you’re just starting out with an ergonomics process, you should perform ergonomics assessments on jobs that are likely to pose the highest risk to workers (such as those tasks involving high force, awkward postures, long duration or high frequency of movements), but ideally your organization would eventually perform ergonomics assessments for all job tasks.

Ergonomics assessments should also be performed when a new task is introduced as part of an operator’s job, or when some change has been made to either the workstation where a task is being performed or the procedure to perform a specific task. You want to ensure that new risks of musculoskeletal disorders, or soft tissue injuries, have not been introduced for a worker performing those tasks at their workstation.

In addition, you will want to perform follow-up ergonomics assessments after improvements have been made to a workstation or task, to ensure the job improvement has successfully reduced the risk level for workers.

What Tools are Utilized for an Ergonomics Assessment?

Ergonomics teams often rely on observational MSD risk assessment methods to assess MSD risks. There are numerous techniques that assessors apply during an observational-based ergonomics assessment, and differing levels of familiarity and expertise can introduce significant variability in measurements and other assessment data. As a result, assessment scores are often inaccurate and unreliable. In some instances, organizations use sensors and multiple cameras to track body movements during a job task. The data is more accurate than using traditional, observation methods, but the cost of special equipment to collect the data is often cost prohibitive for many companies.

For accurate ergonomics assessments that are easier to perform and require very little equipment, many organizations are turning to AI-powered technology like the sensorless motion-capture Advanced Assessment Tool in VelocityEHS Ergonomics . This technology can eliminate human error and variability in ergonomics assessments, reduces the time it takes to perform assessments, and only requires a camera on a mobile device to gather data. This results in objective, accurate data for your assessment and a more effective analysis of MSD risk in the job task being assessed.

Manual, practical tools are helpful for gathering key measurements for an ergonomics assessment. This includes something as basic as a tape measure to record surface heights, hand working heights and horizontal reaches. More specialized tools are used to measure different kinds of forces, listed below and paired with the type of force they are made to measure:

• Pinch Grip: Pinch grip dynamometer
• Finger Press: Force gauge
• Power Grip: Hand dynamometer
• Product/Tool Weight: Scale
• Pushing: Force gauge
• Pulling: Force gauge

How Do You Perform an Ergonomics Assessment?

When you perform an ergonomics assessment, you should focus on identifying key musculoskeletal disorder (MSD) risk factors within each individual job task (based on force, posture, frequency and duration). Be sure to use the valuable input from your workers who are actually performing these tasks to help prioritize which jobs should be assessed first.

Next, select a risk assessment tool that can be standardized and applied to most, if not all, work tasks, and can offer an objective analysis of the task you’re assessing. Ideally, this tool will be integrated with the system you are using to manage your ergonomics process, like the Advanced Assessment Tool within VelocityEHS Industrial Ergonomics.

That way, you’ll do more than just see the results of the ergonomics assessment. You’ll be able to use that information to prioritize where to make improvements that reduce risks, document those improvements, and then systematically compare assessments after improvements have been made, to quantify how much the risk has been reduced. This verification is key to an effective, sustainable ergonomics process that will help you achieve your health and safety goals.

How VelocityEHS Can Help

VelocityEHS Ergonomics Software makes it easy for your employees to identify risk and implement improvements. Our online training and assessment tools make it possible to deploy industry best practices to one or even hundreds of locations at a time. And even though approximately 75% of issues can be resolved by employees on their own, our ergonomics software is backed by the industry’s most trusted board-certified ergonomists for those cases that require additional support. From assessments, to training to reporting, VelocityEHS is ergonomics done right^®.