Learn how to use leading and lagging metrics to track your ergonomics improvement efforts.
“What gets measured gets done.”
— Unknown
The quote above is often attributed to a number of different people. Whether it was Deming, Drucker or Peters who said it first, it’s true — measurement is important.
Operational excellence can only exist when it is defined and measured. So to achieve excellence in ergonomics, you will need to define smart metrics and track them every step of the way.
Understanding leading and lagging indicators
Before getting into specific metrics to track, it will be worth your time to consider the difference between leading and lagging indicators.
Leading indicators: A leading indicator is a measure preceding or indicating a future event used to drive and measure activities carried out to prevent and control injury.
Lagging indicators: Lagging indicators measure a company’s incidents in the form of past accident statistics.
While you’ll want to use both types of indicators, putting an emphasis on leading indicators will keep you on the proactive end of the spectrum. You’ll be able to use leading indicators to guide your path forward and reduce risk before injuries and other bad outcomes (lagging indicators) happen.
Example ergonomics process metrics to track
The metrics you choose should correspond to the goals you have set for the ergonomics process. These metrics will generally fall into four categories:
- Develop a highly trained workforce with ergonomics awareness, knowledge and skills
- Identify ergonomic risk factors
- Control ergonomic risk factors
- Get results
1. Develop a highly trained workforce with ergonomics awareness, knowledge and skills
The heart of the ergonomics improvement process is identifying and controlling ergonomic risk factors. Accomplishing this requires a highly trained workforce with ergonomics knowledge and skills. To be successful, your people need to be trained up to meet their role/responsibility in the process.
Percentage of employees who have completed ergonomics training.
All employees should undergo ergonomics awareness and MSD prevention training. This ongoing measure ensures no employee gets left behind.
Number of ergonomics skills training workshops completed.
Ergonomics team members, engineers and facilities staff, supervisors and other team members who need specialized skills to accomplish their role in the process need to be trained. This is an activity measure with the goal of ensuring your team has the skills needed to conduct an effective, efficient ergonomics improvement process.
2. Identify ergonomic risk factors
Identifying the risk present in your workplace is an essential step in the process. You can only make efforts to lower the risk you know is there. These metrics will tell you how well you understand the risk levels present in your facility.
Percentage of targeted jobs that have been assessed for risk.
This leading measure indicates how much you know about the ergonomic risk factors in your workplace. This number will drive completion of ergonomic risk assessments.
Percentage of new equipment, tools, and processes that are assessed for risk prior to implementation.
This number should stay at 100% to ensure ergonomic risk factors are not being introduced through new equipment, tools and processes.
3. Control ergonomic risk factors
Controlling ergonomic risk factors by making workplace improvements is the key action of the ergonomics process. You absolutely must track how well you are controlling the risk you identify in the previous step.
Percentage of jobs at low risk.
This is a key number to track and measures the overall risk profile of your facility. Driving this number up should be on everyone’s radar at all times.
Percentage of medium/high risk jobs with controls implemented.
This a leading measure of the effectiveness of your improvement process. If medium/high risks are identified but not controlled in a timely and consistent way, the ergonomics process is doomed to struggle.
4. Get results
Are you meeting your injury reduction goals or not? Are you getting a return on your investment or not?
Injury reduction.
Tracking musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs), lost time days, injury severity, and worker’s compensation costs is important to determine how effective your ergonomics and MSD prevention process is.
Return on investment.
Are you getting a return on your investment of resources? Tracking ROI over time can generate a dividend you can use to reinvest in the ergonomics and MSD prevention process.
Metrics dashboard
Display a metrics dashboard with your chosen ergonomics process metrics for all to see. This will hold everyone accountable and motivate the team to get more done to meet goals.
Setting ambitious goals and using smart metrics to track your progress will put you on the path to a best practice ergonomics and MSD prevention process.
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