Encouraging Workers to Embrace Ergonomic Work Strategies
Effective ergonomic training should focus on practical skill development to ensure workers adopt and apply ergonomic strategies.
- By Carrie Taylor
- Jan 31, 2025
Over years of working at the same job, workers develop strategies that help them to perform difficult tasks more easily. These “ergonomic work strategies” can be identified and documented. What is the best way to communicate and encourage less experienced workers to use these strategies?
A supervisor or experienced worker can work with a less experienced worker, showing them the strategy, supervising as the employee tries it out, and providing feedback to assure the employee that they got it right. This is “training”, but it’s pretty labor-intensive. To be fair, not all workers have the skills, patience or interest required to train new workers.
Ergonomists are often asked to provide training to workers. If the ergonomist is not intimately familiar with the jobs that the workers perform, then the training will be generic. “Bend the knees to lift heavy loads.” “Bring the load as close to the body as possible before lifting it.” The workers have to figure out how a tip applies in their workplace. Not surprisingly, they’ve heard it all before and likely have never taken the time to apply the proposed tips.
More tragically, ergonomists might be promoting tips that make the job worse. If a worker tries to bend the knees to lift the leg of a patient who is lying on a bed, the forward distance between the spine and the load will increase, and that will increase the load on the back.
In this case “bend the knees” doesn’t help at all. Most workers know this, intuitively, so they usually sit politely through the session, grateful for a few minutes away from their work routine. The training is reduced to another box checked off on the company’s audit, without any real gain.
To really encourage workers to use appropriate ergonomic work strategies:
- Make sure to identify the best ergo work strategies.
- Use adult learning principles to create the training.
There are mountains of research that help teachers plan and execute lesson plans, but when it comes to workplace training, suddenly everyone is just lecturers. A lecture transfers information, if the students are listening. But training is required to transfer skills. When it comes to ergonomic work strategies, the goal is to teach people how to do something, and this is the essence of “skill”.
The following five steps can be followed to teach a worker to use a new ergo work strategy. As an example, let’s follow the process to teach workers to “use a staggered stance” while using a weed or hedge trimmer.
- Show the worker how to use the strategy and why it helps.
“If I stand with my feet close together, I risk falling over when I reach out to the side or forward.” (Demonstrating like the branches of a tree in a strong breeze, the facilitator can show that, when both hands reach more than a foot to the side, balance is lost.)
“If I space my feet apart, with one foot slightly forward, I create a larger base of support, and I can move my hands much further to the side without falling. I’m also stronger in this position.” (Demonstrating that, with a staggered stance, balance can be maintained when both hands reach more than a foot to the side.)
- Ask the worker to try the strategy and compare it to the common practice.
“In pairs, workers should face each other and put their palms against each other. Keeping the feet close together, gently push, increasing the effort until one partner’s foot slides or steps. This is the common practice, and the larger or stronger partner will “win” the challenge.”
“Let’s give the person who lost that challenge an ergonomic advantage. That person should space the feet shoulder-width apart, one foot slightly ahead of the other. Now repeat the pushing activity.”
- Let the worker know if they got it right.
“Did the ergo work strategy help? If the partner with the staggered stance won the second challenge, then the ergo work strategy made that person stronger.”
- Ensure that the worker makes the connection between what they’ve done in the training and what they do in the workplace.
“Where does this strategy apply in the workplace?” (Using hedge trimmers, especially where shorter shrubs prevent us from getting close to the hedge.)
- Reinforce the training in the workplace.
“When a co-worker is holding a trimmer, remind them to “stagger their stance”!
Consider Microlearning
Teens are not the only age group who have been affected by social media. No one has the attention span to tolerate long stretches of training, even when it is engaging and interactive. Further, if teaching 10 different strategies in one session, participants won’t be able to remember them all long enough to apply them in the workplace.
Delivering training in short five-minute sessions makes a bigger impact and allows participants to use one strategy before moving on to the next. They might chat about the training over lunch, which reinforces their learning. And five-minute sessions fit more easily into the workplace, during a morning meeting or safety talk.
Measure the Impact
It’s bold to attempt to measure how effective training is, but let’s try. Here’s how:
- Compare injury statistics, before and after rolling out ergo work strategy training.
- Survey workers to compare baseline and follow-up comfort as well as self-reported productivity, quality and job satisfaction scores.
- Ask participants, when they sign off, to rate the value of each session on a 10-point scale.
Heaps of money are spent every year on ergonomics training that has negligible impact on the workplace. Further, the cost of delivering that training is negligible in comparison to the labor cost associated with having the entire workforce away from productive work for an hour at a time. Invest more time upfront in the development of solid ergonomic work strategies and skill-based, practical training, and reap the rewards.