Adjust your chair, raise your monitor and don't forget to stretch! These recommendations, along with hundreds of others, have become the battle cry of companies across the country in their effort to reduce injuries. Training videos, live presentations, posters and handouts continue to spread the word about ergonomics and injury prevention. Despite these efforts many organizations remain frustrated over the lack of employee participation and compliance when it comes to ergonomics and injury prevention programs. Why, despite the thousands of dollars that companies spend to get the word out are people not changing their behaviors?
To better understand this we need to examine how and why people change, and why so many people resist change so vehemently. Change most often occurs in our lives because one, two or all three of the following are present:
A desire to change
A need to change
An ability to change
When a person hurts their back we see the items on this list come in to play. The injured person develops a strong desire to change to make the pain go away. The person has a need to change in order to be able to go about their business. If the person takes some time to recover and receives appropriate treatment they also will have the ability to change.
Now, take this same person, without pain, and ask them to make the same changes in their behavior. The pain (which generated the desire) is no longer present and the physical limitations (which dictated the need) are no longer present. At this point the question of an ability to change is a moot point.
When a person is injured the pain and limitations drive his/her changes in behavior. For a relatively healthy and pain-free work force, the driving variable that dictates change is the "what's in it for me" factor. If any of us are going to make a change we want to know how we personally will benefit from our efforts. This "what's in it for me" approach has been effectively utilized by industry for years to impact production levels. Management simply asking employees to work harder out of the goodness of their hearts is not the most effective way to motivate change. Management telling the employees they will pay them more if they produce more sends a much clearer "what's in it for me" signal. As a result, change occurs and production levels rise.
When the "what's in it for me?" message is not inherently clear to employees, as is the case in many safety issues, companies create external ways of delivering this message.
