Safe, Efficient, Profitable: A Worker Safety Podcast
Joe and Jen Allen of Allen Safety LLC take their combined 40+ years of worker safety, OSHA, EPA, production, sanitation, and engineering experience in Manufacturing Plants including Harvest Plants/Packers, Case Readies and Further Processing Plants, Food Production Plants, Feed Mills, Grain Elevators, Bakeries, Farms, Feed Lots, and Petro-Chemical and bring you their top methods for identifying risk, preventing injuries, conquering the workload, auditing, managing emergencies and catastrophic events, and working through OSHA citations. They're breaking down real safety opportunities, safety citations, and emergency situations from real locations, and discussing realistic solutions that can actually be implement based on their personal experiences spending 40+ weeks in the field every year since 2001. Joe and Jen are using all of that experience to provide a fresh outlook on worker safety by providing honest, (no sponsors here!) and straight forward, easy to understand safety coaching with actionable guidance to move your safety program forward in a way that provides tangible results.
Safe, Efficient, Profitable: A Worker Safety Podcast
Is Ergonomics A Waste of Money? #64
In this episode, Joe and Jen debate if making changes based on ergonomic evaluations are worth the money, and how to get a return on any ergo projects. If you're wondering if JHAs, JSAs, and Ergo assessments are worth the time and effort, this one is for you!
Key Takeaways:
Ergonomics Is Often Overlooked: When businesses are under pressure, ergonomic improvements are frequently postponed, yet neglecting them leads to higher injury rates and long-term costs.
New Hires at Risk: In physically demanding industries like poultry processing, new hires are particularly vulnerable to ergonomic injuries, especially if proper work hardening and ramp-up processes are not followed.
Broaden Ergonomic Understanding: Ergonomics isn't just about repetitive tasks; it involves the entire work environment, including awkward movements, environmental factors, and poorly designed equipment.
PPE and Ergonomics: Ill-fitting PPE can cause significant ergonomic problems, especially for women or other employees whose body types differ from the "standard" sizing used for most PPE.
ROI of Ergonomic Solutions: Investing in ergonomic solutions can deliver a solid ROI by reducing injuries, improving productivity, and even lowering turnover in high-risk roles.
Work Design Matters: Ergonomic assessments should include the broader context of the worker’s environment, not just isolated tasks.
Fatigue Increases Risks: Ergonomic risks increase toward the end of a shift when workers are fatigued, making tasks like lifting heavy hoses more dangerous.
This week's episodes is ergo a waste of money. Is it worth your money?
Speaker 2:Maybe, maybe not.
Speaker 1:I don't know. We're going to figure it out today.
Speaker 2:We're going to work through it. Here we go.
Speaker 1:Here we go All the time. People say to me ergo's great, ergo's bad, do we need ergo? All I hear from plant to plant is we have ergo first. I think we determine is what are we even talking about?
Speaker 2:because I think that this is a really, really good one. So we're getting ready to start a cost series as it relates to safety. So how do we manage cost and safety? Where do we find that cost savings for the continuous improvement we're looking for everyone's budget conscious and you guys asked for us to cover some stuff on ergo. We're going to start with ergo because that is a big one and it's usually the thing that falls off when we start getting shorthanded and we get behind on stuff we usually don't do, ergo stuff, so let's talk about it.
Speaker 2:Is that important or not?
Speaker 1:All right. So the first one is I don't have an ergo problem at my plant because we have turnover, so I don't have to worry about it. That's what I hear all the time.
Speaker 2:Well, so I guess it really is dependent on what you manufacture, what your business is, Because I can tell you on the poultry side that is some of the most frequent cases we see are new employees because we didn't do the rampant at all.
Speaker 1:Maybe they caused the turnover. Yeah, we didn't do it, yeah.
Speaker 2:So we've got the turnover because of the high piece counts or we didn't do the work hardening, but we had a lot of ergo issues on the poultry side that we've seen because they just it's very physically demanding.
Speaker 1:I thought the cow hide his. Ergo, I saw poultry. I'm like, oh no.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I saw poultry. I'm like, oh no, oh yeah, the twisting and stuff.
Speaker 1:There's a lot different on the poultry side.
Speaker 2:So I think the first thing we want to do is really kind of expand what we consider ergonomics right.
Speaker 1:Oh, I palletize.
Speaker 2:So it's more than just.
Speaker 1:I do count with a knife.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's more than. The three top things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we want to expand our view past its palletizing box makeup and we fix it by getting a new conveyor.
Speaker 2:And knife handling jobs right? What could be presenting an issue that's past the production floor? What about the outlying jobs?
Speaker 1:Our company Ergo. Eight hour, 10 hour, 12 hour drive, that's our Ergo.
Speaker 2:Or standing for 10 to 12 hours.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, or we got gotta do six hours yeah, we're out in the weather.
Speaker 2:I mean, those are, those are our argo yeah, so I think part of it is anything that's extreme one direction or another, absolutely including.
Speaker 1:It could be both sides of the spectrum so anything that's really hot, really cold, anything that's standing or sitting for prolonged periods I get promoted when I'm handling chemicals, so now I'm the one that does all the heavy lifting with the massive, massive beginning.
Speaker 2:I'm the one, not the end user.
Speaker 1:The end user's got the small container and they roll it around. I'm the ergo one, but it looks like they would have the ergo because they're actually doing it more, but their risk is lower than mine.
Speaker 2:Because they're not able or allowed maybe at that facility to mix or titrate. That's correct.
Speaker 1:And it's the weight of it, it's the containers, but I'm still doing it every night. I may have to do it 100 times a night, but I'm doing 50. Yeah, so that's the weird stuff like that, so people do get caught up in. Well, it's small, you do it 100 times. It's a lot, yep, all right, so here's one that gets me. So I travel a lot. Everybody knows that. New plants all the time. A lot of times I go there for three hours, five hours, five days. I don't know, but I will tell you. You put a hard hat on me and I will tell you instantaneously if I think that hard hat feels good or not, in about 15 minutes to eight hours. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because, ergo, it's quite a time span. Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1:But the point is ergo. People will say well, they wore this PPE for days, there wasn't a problem. But some people like when I'm new, I can feel it so as a new hire. The new hire, if you put PPE on them you don't have to worry about ergo with them, because they're going to tell you it feels weird and they're already having problems. So now making them wear the wrong size PPE or the wrong hard hat, the wrong glove, that could be your ergo from day one.
Speaker 2:I think part of it is so in our industry we have to have PPE that meets a multitude of needs. Right, We've got to meet the food safety stuff. We've got to meet the safety stuff. You know, some of it is because of the maintenance teams or the chemical handling.
Speaker 2:So there's a lot going on that each item has to meet specific standards for expectations for right. But I think it's really important to remember. First, it's PPE. We're all built a little differently, correct, so some things that are going to cause pressure in different parts, I mean it should be. I get to select. That's part of it.
Speaker 1:We select hearing protection.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's pre-approved styles that we are aware that meet the needs that we have, and then they get to pick because, again, everybody's shaped different. I'm very cognizant of this because, as a female.
Speaker 2:Most ppe in my past it's getting better now but most historically has been made for a male and so it's all way too big. Which is constantly with the gloves. Why is every pair of gloves size large or extra large? Why is every pair of boots that I get not fitting me? That's a trip hazard. That's a slip hazard. It's also weird on my legs. When I'm walking around for eight hours on a production floor it hurts my calves and my legs because I'm having to do something weird with my feet to keep them from falling off when I'm moving around.
Speaker 1:So it could be the thickness of the clothing, like thick pants, like arc flash you, you put arc flash on jen, so jen got some arc flash gear yeah, I've got a lot of cat too stuff yeah, and you know the arc flash I was wearing at the plants was super thick.
Speaker 1:Well, it weighs on you all day long and it's hot. She was able to give her different styles, so she had the same flash hazard reduction, but from an argo side mine is way heavier and way harder, even though you would think in the old days that was backwards, but now she has a better outfit yeah, I do well, and that's the thing.
Speaker 2:So I think it's really important, especially in the PPE side, that we don't gear everybody up to prevent the injury, just to cause it. On the ergo side, I mean, I'm thinking of even like my farms if we've got coveralls at my farms that are too big and we keep adjusting all the time. You know it's weird all day long and that can be, even if it's not necessarily an ergo injury because of that constant adjusting of stuff, that can still cause an injury in other ways too.
Speaker 1:So I also look at, ergo, some of the repetitive, so not just repetitive, as in doing the task but that I catch my eye, if I see them.
Speaker 2:Completely yeah, all right.
Speaker 1:So here's the, here's the one. Forklifts Right? Okay, you told me that if I drive a forklift I got to face Ford when I drive it, so I don't run over everybody.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But you also told me, as a safety manager plant you can't drive with a bunch of pallets because you can't see around. So now you got to drive backwards or forward. Yeah, that forklift. You never gave me a chair to turn around.
Speaker 2:Yeah, see your neck my whole day on.
Speaker 1:The forklift is turned yeah, my whole day because the safety pause. So, yes, ergo man, not a cot. That was an issue, but it's forcing me from the safety side because I'm carrying these eight or nine pallets, I'm always turned backwards absolutely so now I'm always sore. I'm Absolutely so. Now I'm always sore, I'm always tilted, and now it's hard.
Speaker 2:It's hard for me all day long.
Speaker 1:That chair is not made to do that, right, right.
Speaker 2:So that's one of our ergos, so that's one of our ergos, all right.
Speaker 1:So another one is everyone has a top 10 for ergo and they say here they are, we're going to do knife handling, we've got this, we've got that. That's great. But what I look for is how many of the top 10 reduce the risk and I get a money payback on yes. So what I look at Ergo is I don't look at Ergo as a $50,000 machine that fixes the problem. I look at what, when I'm putting a plan in place Ergo, what is the thing I can get the most payback on?
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:And then, as I do, that, it seems to be easier to sell the ergo idea. So if I say, look at production, that's right. Look at the labor's not as bad and the piece count has went down or maybe it's the weight is reduced. So that's how I look at ergo. Yes, and I know that's things you're supposed to do, but realistically, we've worked in plants where it just doesn't happen. So I think when you're looking at Ergo overall and you're saying, is it worth my money or not, you've got to look at ROI, you've got to look at how that and then sell that. If you're the safety manager or the Ergo manager, sell it, look what I can do and how it helps us out.
Speaker 2:Well, and I think a big thing that you can evaluate if you are a facility that's experiencing a lot of turnover is that the jobs that you're seeing the most turnover in. That might also have a correlation to ergo and if it does, you're seeing lots of turnover and you have ergo issues with it. That might be a good one to look at automation on.
Speaker 1:Absolutely All right. Another one I look at is work designs. So I don't look at work design as in where I'm doing the task in front of me. I look at the work design as how many times I have to go around the area I'm working and how many other steps I gotta do. So maybe my ergo is not my shoulders. My ergo is my feet, always stepping and twisting over a pipe or like a cry back. You got the discharge side and always stepping on.
Speaker 2:How many times am I stepping over this weird drain?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'm getting this piece of plastic every time and I'm always leaning over to do it. That's the stuff that sometimes people miss when they look at ergo, because they'll evaluate well, I stand to do the job this way, well.
Speaker 2:I think that's exactly it. So the ergo assessment is designed to say what is this job task? I'm going to watch their job task, but we're not evaluating the environment sometimes to see, yeah, but in order for them to do their job tasks, this other stuff is weird over here, right.
Speaker 1:So I use that time.
Speaker 2:Every time a forklift comes in or every time somebody.
Speaker 1:They have to move to the left a couple of weeks, so I use that ergo assessment as that. What can I engineer out around the person in their working area to have less ergo other issues.
Speaker 2:Yeah, out around the person and their working area to have less or go other issues? Yeah, can we adjust their their work setting so that they're not having to bend, twist, walk all? All over the place and and carry this stuff at a weird angle. Absolutely right.
Speaker 1:So that reduces my injuries, it makes my profit go up, yeah, and it gets rid of my my maintenance always complaining that something's always getting kicked or something's always getting loose Stood on or whatever. Well, it's because that design of that workstation isn't right. So I will use the ergo assessment, but as I do that, I will look at all the other things.
Speaker 2:And if I can engineer out those other controls, I actually can lower my hazard. You start looking at do I have an ergo job potentially, and you evaluate well, what's my repair and maintenance like in this department and if I start seeing a lot of weird repair and maintenance stuff that's repetitive from production employees doing a certain task.
Speaker 2:So maybe it's standing on something or stepping on something. Well, that would be a great trigger for me to look at. Hey, I can get a little bit safer environment for my employee and I can also reduce reduce my my repair maintenance costs too.
Speaker 1:Right, so I so that's your ROI, yeah. So when I look at ergo, whether it's a cost or not, I use it in different ways when I'm doing those assessments.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so really it's an environment evaluation and a hazard evaluation. It's not exclusively just am I bending and twisting and have lots of repetition, it's a bigger thing.
Speaker 1:I'm looking for everything they're doing that day and I'm also looking at. The last part is I'm looking at if that person's gone and we have someone called vacation, so Joe's the fill in for your job whenever you were gone. Mm-hmm you had an ergo assessment the way you did it and I'm throwing it in there tomorrow and I haven't done it. In six months my ergo assessment is going to be completely different.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So you've got to calculate that people are going to take vacation, people are going to take days off and someone's going to fill in. So I have two ways. I have the ergo, how they normally do it, yep. And then I'm like, okay, but six months going to come in and be able to do it, just like that.
Speaker 2:And it's and it's goes back to that turnover issue, because that's something very similar to bringing a new employee. If they haven't been doing it for six months, to me they're basically a new employee.
Speaker 1:Absolutely For that job.
Speaker 2:For that job they don't have that, that buildup of that works, hardening, correct To help them out to prevent that injury.
Speaker 1:Here's another ergo one. I'm a maintenance person at a plant and they give me the biggest belt I can carry with as many tools possible and there's no weight per tool calculation.
Speaker 2:I don't want to go back to the shop because it's kind of far. So yeah, so I'm going to carry everything with me.
Speaker 1:I'm like, okay, get them a cart you know, get them something put a central station, somewhere that has a lot of the tools so they can get access. It's not the walking. The ergo to me is the belt, but the reason is because they don't want to walk so far. So put a central station like a mini. We got toolboxes at the top of the house, the bottom of the house, my barn. Why? Because we don't want to walk all the way over there. So I don't want to carry the tools. So that ergo assessment is not about the weight they're just carrying.
Speaker 2:Go back and figure out why. Why are we doing it? Why?
Speaker 1:are they doing that task, and talk to them, say why do you not want to walk back there? And they tell you, because I've never seen anybody going way all the tools they're carrying and saying, well, you're over the limit, you can't take that. Now, you know so that you have to manage that.
Speaker 2:The and I don't think we're suggesting you do that no but we're just saying realistically that's your ergo.
Speaker 1:It is a lot of weight, it's the travel.
Speaker 2:Especially for someone who is not used to doing that. There's going to be some back pain there.
Speaker 1:Absolutely All right, and my last one's here If you do any kind of hose handling, daytime, nighttime, the number one thing I tell everybody is A when you carry a hose at the end of your shift, you're the tires.
Speaker 2:You're the most sore Most of the time, yeah, when you're putting it away.
Speaker 1:But the ergo evaluations are always about doing the work during the shift and most of my injuries come the last 30 minutes from taking that 200-foot heavy hose that is uncontrolled. What size and length and weight there are per location?
Speaker 2:Yeah, or is it two people? Is that one person, you know? Should it be two people carrying it? Do?
Speaker 1:I put it in a pallet? Do I put it a combo? What did I do? Because that's cause so. So don't look at ergo as as just the shift, and I'm doing that job 40 times.
Speaker 2:It goes back to it's personal to a certain degree too, we can all handle different things in terms of weight and at the end of shift.
Speaker 1:there's only certain people that do that task. That's what you're evaluating. You're evaluating that you're the tiredest. I'm 5'8". I'm carrying 150 foot of hose through a plant that's trying to get running and it's wet, and I might be eight.
Speaker 2:I'm carrying 150 foot of hose through a plant that's trying to get running and it's wet and I might be having stairs.
Speaker 1:That's my injury slash ergo site, because that's when the weight and the problems I'm having are really affecting me. Yeah, it was bad all night, but that's when it ramps up that next level. Yep. So what can I do to injure an owl? So, to close here today, these are our opinions opinions.
Speaker 2:Please do a third arrest assessment. Yep, and if you want some more stuff on ergo, you know, yes, we have done some hazard evaluations, some ergo stuff. You can kind of see what we do and some of the services we offer over at allen-safetycom. You can check us out on any of the socials joe allen and jen allen on linkedin. You can follow us there. Otherwise, at allen safety llc is our handle on pretty much everything. So youtube um facebook yeah, we do have.
Speaker 1:We do have a YouTube channel, don't we?
Speaker 2:We do have a YouTube channel. So you can check us out on Facebook, instagram, tiktok, all the things, and let us know what you think. Drop us a like, share this if it helped you, and well, I think that's it. We'll see you next time Thank you everyone.
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