Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) are a common and costly problem. Watch the video below to learn how to prevent MSDs and maximize human performance. No matter how mature your ergonomics and MSD prevention process is, there are countless opportunities to improve the human performance at your facility.
Enjoy!
Slides
More Popular Resources
If you enjoyed this webinar, you might also find these other popular resources useful:
- The full archive of Ergonomics Plus Injury Prevention and Wellness Handouts
- Ergonomics Improvement Process Flowchart
- Building Wellness from the Inside Out (employee workbook and training program)
- MSD Prevention and Human Performance Audit
- A Customized Cost-Benefit Analysis of Ergonomics Plus Services
Webinar Transcript
If you’d prefer to read the webinar content or read along with the video, the webinar transcript is provided below for your convenience.
Slide 1
Hey everybody!
Matt Middlesworth here with Ergonomics Plus. Welcome to today’s webinar on How to Prevent MSDs and Maximize Human Performance.
Slide 2
Here’s a quick look at the agenda for today.
I’ll be covering why you should care about prevention, what musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) are and what causes them, how to identify and remove risk to prevent MSDs and then I’ll go over our 5-part MSD prevention process and human performance framework.
Slide 3
Why should you care about MSD prevention?
It’s really simple. MSD prevention is good for your business and great for your people.
Slide 4
Prevention is good for your business because MSDs are a costly problem.
- MSDs account for almost 29% of non-fatal lost-time injuries
- The average MSD costs almost $15,000 each
- In 2011, MSDs accounted for $50 billion in worker’s compensation costs. That’s about a billion dollars a week in direct costs and doesn’t include indirect costs which can be up to 20 times the direct costs.
Slide 5
So you can see that the cost savings opportunity for companies is pretty obvious. Prevent the injuries, reduce the costs.
But what the prevention process will also do is improve human performance. By removing risk factors, by designing the workplace within the capabilities and limitations of workers, we can improve productivity and product quality while at the same time reducing injury risk and preventing costly injuries.
In other words, the highest levels of human performance are achieved at the intersection of good workplace design and a healthy, fit and engaged workforce. And that’s where we’re heading.
So the MSD prevention process is good for your business in terms of both cost savings and improved human performance.
Slide 6
And prevention is great for your people. Nobody wants to experience a painful injury at work and no one deserves to.
So MSD prevention is simply the right thing to do and it’s great for your people.
Slide 7
Before I get into our injury prevention framework, it’s important you understand what is behind our prevention philosophy.
And that begins with an understanding of what MSDs are and what causes them. Because that’s going to determine our strategy for prevention and how we go about it.
So what are MSDs?
Slide 8
Musculoskeletal Disorders or Movement System Disorders are injuries and disorders that affect the human body’s movement or musculoskeletal system.
This includes muscles, tendons, ligaments, nerves, discs, blood vessels, etc.
Slide 9 & 10
MSDs develop over the course of time as the result of a muscle imbalance. This muscle imbalance occurs when the worker’s fatigue outruns their body’s recovery system.
Over time, this results in a musculoskeletal disorder like a muscle or tendon strain, tendonitis, epicondylitis, carpal tunnel, and many more injuries and disorders.
Slide 11
Now that we know what MSDs are, we need to know what causes them in the first place.
So what causes a worker’s fatigue to outrun their recovery system?
Slide 12 & 13
The answer is exposure to MSD risk factors – both ergonomic risk factors and individual risk factors.
Ergonomic risk factors include force, repetition and posture.
Individual risk factors include poor work practices, a poor level of physical fitness and poor health habits.
So over time, exposure to these risk factors causes fatigue to outrun recovery and eventually this leads to an MSD.
Slide 14
This is the Fatigue vs. Recovery MSD Curve, and you can see that when daily fatigue, when micro trauma to soft tissues, outruns the worker’s recovery system over time, health begins to fade and an MSD eventually forms.
So there is a constant balancing act between the worker becoming fatigued by performing work and their body’s recovering afterward.
The more risk factors a worker is exposed to, the quicker they will become fatigued and the less likely their body can fully recover. And eventually that muscle imbalance will result in a painful injury. In a musculoskeletal disorder. Their body just can’t recover fast enough.
Slide 15
So now that we know what MSDs are and what causes them, we can form a prevention strategy.
Slide 16
At the core of this strategy is identifying and removing ALL MSD risk factors that contribute to MSDs.
Slide 17
Here is the slide from earlier showing how ergonomic and individual risk factors contribute to MSDs.
Slide 18
In order to identify and remove these risk factors, it’s important to have an ergonomics improvement process and education, training and early intervention in place.
The ergonomics improvement process identifies and removes ergonomic risk factors. Education, training and early intervention removes individual risk factors.
Slide 19
This is the ergonomics PLUS methodology for MSD prevention and improved human performance.
Slide 20 and 21
By using this framework and removing all risk factors contributing to MSDs, you can decrease fatigue on the worker’s body and increase their recovery to achieve muscle balance and prevent the injury from happening.
Slide 22
We call our injury prevention and human performance process the E+ System. It includes Establishment, Education, Early Intervention, Ergonomics and Evaluation.
I’ll very briefly cover each element of the process to give you an understanding of how everything fits together. We could spend days on each of these elements, so if it’s not enough right now or you want further explanations on each … don’t worry. We’ll be creating webinars on each of them, so stay tuned for that.
Slide 23
The first element of the process is Establishment.
Slide 24
Establishment is the foundation and lasting blueprint for success. It’s important to build your efforts on a solid foundation.
During this part of the process, we help our client’s obtain leadership support and build a custom process from the E+ System framework tailored specifically to their needs.
Slide 25
Another element of the E+ System is ergonomics.
Slide 26 and 27
The ergonomics improvement process will systematically identify ergonomic risk factors (force, repetition and posture) and remove them through ergonomic controls, both engineering and administrative controls.
Slide 28
Education and training is another element of the E+ System.
Slide 29
This includes ergonomics training, MSD prevention training and wellness training.
Slide 30 and 31
Education and training will:
- Empower your workforce to implement an effective ergonomics improvement process. So there is ergonomics training.
- Empower your workforce to reduce individual risk factors like poor work practices, poor fitness and overall poor health habits through individual controls.
It is really important to have well-trained and well-equipped people to support the process and the right training will get you there.
Slide 32
The next element of the E+ System is Early Intervention
Slide 33
Here is the Fatigue vs. Recovery MSD Curve we looked at a little bit ago. And if you remember, I talked about MSDs developing over the course of time. It’s a balance between being fatigued after each day of work verses recovering afterward.
Slide 34
Because MSDs develop over the course of time, we know that at least the next 2-3 years’ worth of MSDs are in development right now. This means that the early warning signs of future MSDs, fatigue and discomfort, are present in your workforce today.
The question is, what are you going to do about it?
Slide 35
Early intervention is a proactive strategy designed to discover early warning signs of MSDs and prevent the early warning signs from developing into an injury.
That means that when a worker is being fatigued, the early warning signs of a future MSD are present. This is why workers need to report these early warning signs of MSDs as soon as possible. The earlier we find out about warning signs, the more likely it is that we can correct the causative factors and prevent the injury from happening.
Once an early report is received, an Ergonomics Plus injury prevention specialist will conduct a one-on-one early intervention consultation.
Slide 36 and 37
During the consultation, the injury prevention specialist will:
1. Listen to the employee and understand the problems they are having.
2. Review the self-care program for the employee and make them aware of the prevention tools available to them.
3. Evaluate the job and remove any causative risk factors present through the ergonomics improvement process and implementing the necessary ergonomic controls.
So with early intervention, you are implementing both individual and ergonomic controls and putting a last line of defense in place to prevent the injury and return the employee to a high level of performance.
Slide 38
Evaluation is the last element of the E+ System, but it’s really the beginning, middle, end and everything else in between of the MSD prevention process.
Slide 39
At Ergonomics Plus, one of our foundational principles is that successful partnerships are built on trust and open communication.
We know that in order to have a long-lasting relationship with you, we need to prove our value to you and your company every month.
We default to over-communication to make sure you’re absolutely thrilled with our services and you know precisely what the plan is for continuous improvement.
That’s why we submit a monthly progress report and we conduct an annual audit of the entire process. Not only does that help you understand how the process is progressing but it also allows us to find continuous improvement opportunities and make the process better and more effective.
Slide 40
So that’s the E+ System. Even if you aren’t an Ergonomics Plus client or you never become one, I hope you’ve found this overview useful and relevant to your situation.
Slide 41, 42, 43
It’s a really unique process and approach. There are a bunch of companies out there who do ergonomics training, ergonomic evaluations and workplace improvements.
And there are a bunch of companies out there who do early intervention, workplace wellness and awareness training.
What’s different about us is that by combining good workplace design with a healthy, fit and engaged workforce, you’re able to achieve the highest levels of human performance. And that’s what we’re passionate about, so I hope this webinar has been helpful to you today.
Slide 44
If you have any questions about the content or need anything else, feel free to give me a shout at matt@ergo-plus.com or reach out to @ErgoPlus on Twitter.
And I’ll see you then! Thanks for watching.
