Making the workplace a fit place: "ergonomically safe" is the new buzzphrase. It means adapting the task to the human limitations of the worker - includes article on the components of good ergonomical employer management programs

Business & Health, July, 1991 by Aileen Kantor

When IBM employees suffer from eye strain due to excessive computer use, they go to the doctor and IBM foots the bill. No questions are asked as long as the physician visit is pre-authorized by IBM.

Why? Because the costs of occupational-related injuries are skyrocketing: $48.5 billion for workplace accidents in 1989, according to the National Safety Council. A breakdown of those costs includes lost wages, $8.3 billion; insurance administrative costs, $6.1 billion; medical costs, $8.1 billion; uninsured costs (value of time lost by workers other than those injured), $22.5 billion; and fire, $3.5 billion.

Employers are finding that developing an ergonomically viable workplace--where body, mind, and the environment are in sync--is not just a frill. Rather, it's one of the economic costs of doing business.

The flexible workplace

According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, at least 30 to 40 percent of all workers' compensation cases today stem from cumulative trauma disorders--disorders that affect the musculosketal and nervous systems, most commonly the lower back and wrist and tendon injuries such as carpal tunnel syndrome. In most cases, the failure to adjust the work, and work environment, to the worker is the cause of CTD, which, according to the Workplace Health Fund, a Washington, D.C.-based research agency dedicated to work-related health problems, costs more than $16 billion annually in compensation and treatment.

Experts now claim that because high technology equipment is used across such a large segment of the workplace, the incidence of those with work-related injuries will increase. Hence the importanceof ergonomics--the science devoted to adapting particular tasks to designated performers.

"Ergonomics is the health issue of the 90s," claims Davitt McAteer, executive director of the Occupational Safety and Health Law Center, a Washington, D.C.-based public interest law firm. He cautions, however, that maladaptation and ergonomically deficient worksites have not yet begun to peak as health hazards.

The unsafe office

"Ergonomic safety will impact the workplace of the 90s with a new force," says McAteer. "Workplace safety is no longer a single-source industry problem, like it used to be when we were concerned with protecting coal miners from respiratory illnesses. Today, worksite safety affects a large percentage of our workforce because all economic sectors are affected by the proliferation of sophisticated machinery."

But with no federal standards to govern with workplace, employers are under little pressure to develop worksite safety programs or to ensure that employees are safe from workplace risks. At present, the only recourse OSHA has against employers whose workplace standards contribute to repetitive motion injuries is the "general duty clause" of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, which states that an employer has a duty to provide a safe and health workplace. Without a definition of what constitutes a safe workplace, however this law is difficult to enforce.

But even the likelihood of successful lawsuits from employees exposed to hazardous substances is waning. A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that barred fetal protection policies has left employers with some uncomfortable decisions--either continue to expose women to hazardous substances (and run the risk, diminished but still present, of future lawsuits) or reduce the level of hazardous materials, which will drive up employers' production costs.

"When at least 50 percent of all reported illnesses in 1989 were for cumulative trauma disorders, it behooves employers to try to improve work methods and redesign job structures for their employees," says Roger Stevens, director of the Office of Ergonomics at OSHA. "Most of this expensive lost work time could be avoided if employers tried to prevent disorders by modifying tasks. To try and help this process along, OSHA recently published draft guidelines for workplace standards." (See box.)

Brute force solution

In the absence of regulations, Stevens offers some suggestions. "Employers can first try to hire the strongest workers," he says, "but even the toughest brutes are vulnerable to excessive physical stress. Alternatively, they can try to train employees how to perform their jobs better so as to eliminate work stress. But even with highly-skilled employees, there will still be potential health problems inherent in many jobs."

As the best case scenario, Stevens proposes that employers review the job structure, analyze all risk factors, and eliminate the highest of those factors.

For the past decade, the Russell Corporation, a textile and apparel company located in Alexander City, Ala., has made workplace safety a part of its business. In the past two years, the company has spent more than $10 million to upgrade sewing machine parts in order to reduce wrist strain for their 8,000 sewing machine operators.

But even that sort of investment, says Russell's corporate safety director Charles Robinson, cannot eliminate CTD and other stressors.