Reducing ergonomic risks in your workplace can have substantial benefits such as fewer MSD incidents, fewer lost workdays, lower workers’ comp costs, improved productivity and morale, and greater safety.
You can reduce ergonomic risks in your workplace by using:
- Engineering controls, such as redesigning workstations, tools, and equipment to increase worker comfort and prevent MSDs
- Administrative controls, such as worker rotation, more task variety, and more frequent rest breaks, if necessary, to reduce stress on workers’ bodies
- Safe work practices, such as safe lifting techniques or use of mechanical material-handling aids
- PPE, such as gloves and kneepads to protect workers from contact and vibration stress
- Training to teach employees to recognize hazards and take proper precautions to prevent MSDs, such as maintaining a neutral position while working
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Get Employees to Help
Your workers can play a big role in reducing ergonomic risks by keeping you informed of problems and MSD symptoms.
Quick Case: Office workers at one company complained of pain and stress from long hours of sitting and working on a computer. Bending and reaching to retrieve files from file drawers was also a problem.
Solution: The company trained workers to use the adjustment tools on their chairs, computer monitors, and furniture systems more effectively. Employees were also encouraged to take microbreaks to stretch and relieve muscle tension caused by sitting and keyboarding. Simple changes in workstations were also made to avoid bending and reaching.
Quick Case: Employees at a manufacturer of ceramic cooktops had to manually lift uncut plates of glass onto a waist-high conveyor belt from a knee-high holder, which meant a lot of bending all day.
Solution: The employees themselves devised a stand made from a wooden shipping crate and placed it beneath the holder to raise the glass to waist-height, thereby eliminating the bending and risk of back injury.
By the way, these tips are from just one of the hundreds of materials addressing ergonomics and MSDs on Safety.BLR.com. You can see them all—along with other materials on every imaginable safety and health topic—by simply signing up today for a free 2-week trial.
Your one-stop safety management resource is available 24/7. Go here to take a no-cost site tour or here to try it in your own office!
Stay on Top of All the Changes
Whatever other changes OSHA proposes in the weeks and months ahead, you’ll be able to stay on top of all the latest developments every day, 24/7, with Safety.BLR.com.
Whether it’s proposed rule changes like the MSD revision of the OSHA Form 300, stricter enforcement, or some other safety and health issue, you’ll find it all reported and interpreted for you by our safety experts at Safety.BLR.com.
What’s more, this one-stop safety website is a fantastic resource for safety training materials on just about any topic you can imagine.
Training responsibilities become a snap with the website’s thousands of audio presentations, PowerPoints, prewritten safety meetings, toolbox talks, trainer’s guides, and much, much more. You’ll find training tools on more than 120 safety topics along with plain-English compliance analysis and other resources.
At a time when budget considerations are paramount, what makes more sense than an all-in-one safety training and compliance solution?
And BLR® recently revamped Safety.BLR.com to meet your needs even better. Those of you who used the site in its original version will be amazed by all the new features and functionality. Highlights include:
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We’re pretty excited about Safety.BLR.com and all of its recent enhancements, and we’re eager for you to experience it, too. That’s why we’ve created a complimentary site tour, available here. It takes just 5 minutes.
If you like what you see, you’re invited to try the site at no cost and with no obligation. We’ll even give you a complimentary special report for doing so. Go here to take a 5-minute tour of the new Safety.BLR.com. It may be just what you’re looking for.
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