It was twenty years ago that I started my first job as a consultant ergonomist. This was just in time for the ‘Six Pack’, not the rippling muscular kind but a compendium of blue books bedecked with the European Community yellow stars that dominated the first years of working as an ergonomist. These Regulations covered manual handling, display screen equipment workstations, personal protective equipment, the management of health and safety, work equipment and health and safety on the workplace.
Having spent many years at university trying to explain what ergonomics was, suddenly it all got much easier with the Regulations referring to the use of ergonomics to improve health and safety and to reduce risks. Working in London and the City it could have been a licence to print money but professionalism shone through and ergonomists developed a measured and practical approach to assist some of the vast office-based organisations to address the new legal requirements posed by the Regulations, and in particular, the Display Screen Equipment Regulations.
Way back then, there really were some miserable workplaces; antiquated furniture, poor office layout, patchy lighting, and little attention to job design. Pockets of hard-core smokers continued to fill their offices, and the lungs of their staff with cigarette smoke, and ‘policies’ where the better quality furniture and equipment was assigned according to seniority. Technology took up most of the desk space – with monitors the size of an old fashioned portable TV and the lack of networking know-how meant cables trailed all over the place. Offices were hotter, from the sudden increase in electrical equipment, and the dust gathered under the spaghetti-like electrical cables.
I’d like to say that the Regulations (and ergonomics) changed all of this, but of course changes in technology shrunk the equipment, reduced the cables, got rid of some of the paper, enabled remote and mobile working, shared desks etc. But what the Regulations did do was to raise the workers’ expectations about workplace health and safety provisions and provided knowledge to protect their health in an age where their jobs were becoming more sedentary. It presented an opportunity to raise concerns about their working environment, work load (in relation to mental stress), job variety, and even comments about their boss’s behaviour sometimes found a way through.
In the wrong hands these Regulations enabled some staff to make unreasonable demands, added to the compensation culture, gave some an excuse to malinger and increased many organisations’ expenditure on accessories and furniture that were not all that they promised.
Ergonomists have been central in assisting businesses approach the implementation of these Regulations by designing practical and cost effective ways to conduct assessments, ensure proportionate risk control and to maximise the benefits to improve worker performance, health, safety and morale. Now we have agreed that work is good for us, ergonomists, comfortable working across different disciplines, have helped to ensure that policies and procedures are robust, such that staff can be supported through ill health and kept in work, where appropriate, and to rehabilitate staff following absence. Ergonomists, never afraid to share the knowledge and spread the word, have transferred ergonomics knowledge to assist organisations with the every day management of workplace health and safety. A risky strategy, say some, but perhaps this has secured the longevity of ergonomics input to the office environment – where organisations have come to trust the relationship with their ergonomist and ergonomics as a discipline.
Jo Simmons is Director of ergoworks. Visit www.ergoworks.co.uk.
Print 
PDF