Every company in the Fortune 500 has a variation of the following statement in their corporate literature: "Our people are our most valuable resource." As individuals, we all can subscribe to this statement. But when well-intended individuals are gathered together into a social organization called a business, many times the result is seriously watered down. If indeed people are the most valuable resource, it would seem that not hurting them would be a reasonable corporate strategy.
Interestingly, very few companies view the ergonomics component of their Health and Safety initiatives as a corporate business strategy. Consequently, a void exists between the rhetoric of corporate statements and the reality of funded programs. Many ergonomics programs are trapped in that void. A void where the ergonomics initiative is tolerated rather than embraced and every request for capital funding is an uphill struggle. There are definite reasons why so many Occupational Ergonomics initiatives are in that void. One of my favorite "truisms" for business is: Every organization is perfectly designed to get the results it achieves. If your company struggles with ergonomics, then it follows that your organizational construct for ergonomics is perfectly designed to create failure.
After the careful study of hundreds of ergonomics initiatives, it is clear that the unsuccessful programs failed because they were poorly conceived and their deployment process was flawed. In stark contrast, the strategy and tactics that drove successful programs could have been used to successfully drive any other corporate initiative. Now the words "success" and "failure" will mean different things to different people. The definition of success used in the benchmarking study was based upon three criteria:
The Occupational Ergonomics Initiative achieved a measurable reduction in Musculoskeletal Disorder incident and severity rates.
The reductions were achieved at an acceptable cost to the business.
The methods used were robust and self-sustaining.
If the Occupational Ergonomics Initiative did not achieve all three of these targets, it was not deemed successful. Before you rebut the definition of success, let me point out that these three criteria were not my invention. Rather the three criterion were defined in interviews with hundreds of senior managers and executives. Universally, the person signing the checks defined success as achieving a marked improvement in Health and Safety performance, at a reasonable cost, using methods that were understandable and would continue to deliver benefits for many years.
The presence or absence of a standard will not effectively change the measures of success other than to add an additional component, "Are we compliant?"
Many if not most companies that have even a rudimentary ergonomics program are already compliant with the minimal requirements of the OSHA draft standard.
