Typing, sitting, and reading all day at the office may not seem like the most strenuous activities, but these are actually hazardous ergonomic risk factors that could turn into big problems for employees and managers alike. When an employee suffers a workplace injury, his or her productivity could take a hit and significantly hurt business efficiency.
How to Identify Office Ergonomic Risk Factors
To help protect employees and keep business operations running smoothly, organizations should understand how to quickly identify ergonomic risks before they even occur. Here are the top three tips to help you identify ergonomic risk factors in any work environment.
- Look for repetitive tasks. When ergonomic risk factors go ignored, they often lead to musculoskeletal disorders. This happens when employees spend long periods of time completing continued, repetitive tasks, which cause pain or impairment in the tendons and muscles. For instance, an office worker may spend hours in front of a computer screen. While this approach might seem productive, staff members may put themselves at risk if they fail to re-evaluate workplace ergonomics. By identifying these repetitive tasks through an office ergonomics program, you can proactively take corrective action.
- Examine storage issues. Some offices have limited storage space. Managers may try to work around this limited space by stacking office supplies higher than they should or placing them in hard-to-access areas. However, this improper storage could create workplace hazards. To access this office supplies, employees may find themselves lifting heavy objects in awkward postures, pushing and pulling boxes from unnatural positions, and the like. With proper, easily accessible storage options, such as cabinets and shelves, you can eliminate these ergonomic risk factors.
- Implement office ergonomic assessment software. Identifying injury-prone tasks, tracking employee work habits, and monitoring workplace conditions is no easy task, but that’s where office ergonomic assessment software can help. With office ergonomic assessment software, the technology proactively identifies high-risk employees and jobs, which allows you to know where to focus your resources.
Office ergonomic assessment software also provides self-assessments tools and trainings to empower employees to monitor and improve their own health. Once you identify ergonomic risk factors, office ergonomic assessment software even gives you the capability to better track results and measure ROI.
By recognizing potential ergonomic risks, you can get ahead of these issues before they impact your workforce. If your organization could use help better identifying ergonomic risk factors, schedule your free demo today to learn how you can protect the health and safety of your employees while improving organizational performance.
