Ergonomics and industrial athlete programs combine to form a comprehensive solution to the musculoskeletal disorder problem. Only when they are combined can you implement the full range of controls required to dramatically decrease musculoskeletal injuries for your organization.
Industrial athlete programs are becoming commonplace in industry, but we still run into situations where safety managers are reluctant to implement them. They say factors relating to the individual shouldn’t be considered or addressed because they fall in the lower part of the hierarchy of controls. They believe the engineering controls they implement through the ergonomics process are the only controls they should put in place.
We believe this is misguided of course, but to explain why we should start at the beginning. There are two questions you have to answer before you arrive at a conclusion about how to prevent MSDs at your worksite:
- What is a musculoskeletal disorder?
- What causes them?
The answers to these questions should inform your prevention strategy moving forward.
What is a musculoskeletal disorder?
MSDs are often referred to as “repetitive motion injuries” or “ergonomic injuries”. This framing is inaccurate! It wrongly implies a singular cause and therefore wrongly implies a singular solution.
A musculoskeletal disorder is a musculoskeletal disorder. It is an injury to the musculoskeletal system of the human body.
The musculoskeletal system in your body is undergoing constant change. There is no such thing as stasis. It is either being fatigued or it is recovering. In a perfect world, as your musculoskeletal system is fatigued at the end of each day, it is able to fully recover.
MSDs happen when fatigue outruns recovery. Over time, a musculoskeletal imbalance progresses into an injury.
And that leads us to our next question…
What causes musculoskeletal disorders?
According to the research, there are multiple causative risk factors that can contribute to musculoskeletal imbalances that result in an MSD.
You can break MSD risk factors down into two categories, ergonomic risk factors and individual risk factors. This makes sense given that the field of ergonomics and human factors studies the interaction between humans and their environment: there is risk on both sides of this interaction.
Ergonomic Risk Factors
The three primary ergonomic risk factors are excessive force, awkward postures, and high repetition.
Risk increases when there is a combination of these risk factors present in a job. Force, in particular and especially when combined with other risk factors, plays a large role in the development of a musculoskeletal imbalance.
Individual Risk Factors
A substantial body of research provides strong evidence that individual risk factors can impact the likelihood for occurrence of MSDs. These risk factors include work practices, fitness, and health habits.
The hierarchy of controls
The fundamental principle behind MSD prevention is to identify these risk factors at your worksite and implement control measures. This is the only way to get in front of the MSD problem. You have to think prevention.
Control measures include:
- Elimination: Physically remove the hazard
- Substitution: Replace the hazard
- Engineering: Isolate people from the hazard
- Administrative: Change the way people work
- PPE: Protect the worker with Personal Protective Equipment
Now this is where the ergonomics-only safety managers make a logical error. They’ll point to the hierarchy of controls and say, “See! Engineering controls are the most desirable control method and that is what we’ll do.”
The problem with this line of thinking is that the hierarchy of controls is used to prioritize control methods in specific contexts. It is not about exclusion of control methods.
Again, the hierarchy of controls is about prioritization and not exclusion. What it actually means is that you need to have all of these control methods available to you. When you identify a risk, you work through the hierarchy of controls to prioritize the control methods you’ll put in place. Often, you’ll end up putting multiple control methods in place.
For example, I can’t imagine anyone saying all PPE should be excluded from your safety program because it falls on the low end of the hierarchy of controls. No, PPE falls on the low end of the hierarchy of controls and every safety program has it.
For an ergonomics-related example, what will you do when engineering controls aren’t available to you? This is a frequent problem. Due to capital constraints or the nature of work, engineering controls aren’t feasible. What then? Are you not going to have any control measures in place?
The combination of ergonomics and industrial athlete programs provide you with the full range of controls required to dramatically decrease MSD risk factors. They belong together.
Forming your prevention strategy
Now that you know what musculoskeletal disorders are, what causes them, and what control measures are available, you can start to form your prevention strategy.
All prevention strategies share the same fundamental goal of identifying and controlling risks. The difference is in your level of ambition for preventing musculoskeletal injuries.
When it comes to controlling ergonomic risk factors, will you limit yourself to engineering controls alone or will you have the entire range of the hierarchy of controls available to you if engineering controls aren’t feasible?
When it comes to individual risk factors, will you have any control methods at your disposal? If an industrial athlete is experiencing fatigue and discomfort, will help be available to them?
Better approach, better outcomes
Combining ergonomics and industrial athlete programs has an extremely high base rate of success. If you look around you’ll find case study after case study detailing the success of these programs. Whether you choose to partner with ErgoPlus or not, I’m confident you’ll get results just because the base rate of these programs is so high. If you compare ergonomics-only firms against ergonomics-plus-industrial-athlete firms, you’ll find that the latter achieves the best health outcomes by far.
