SECTION III Service Systems
5.5 Services Developed
During phase one of the project plan, several customer services were developed, based on customer needs.
Throughout the project plan, service processes were modified based on experience and customer input.
Ergonomics Coordinator
Interdisciplinary teams are fine, but when the members are not collocated, communication can suffer.
We established an ergonomics coordinator (EC) to handle all incoming calls from customers and match their needs to our resources. This required some basic ergonomics training so that a triage procedure could be used by the EC to determine the level of priority and urgency of response. Upon receiving a call, the EC filled out a form with all of the relevant customer and problem information. She then assigned a priority category, based on symptoms, and scheduled one of the CEG members to respond, based on pre-established time blocks of member availability. All information relating to symptoms was handled as private. A memorandum was then faxed to the caller’s supervisor stating that one of the services had been arranged, what it consisted of, and how much it could potentially cost. The service was free, but any purchases were paid for by the customer. The EC also used judgment in matching CEG members’
skills with the nature of the customers’ needs.
The EC coordinated paperwork resulting from worksite evaluations (WSEs), kept files, and maintained a database on service calls. Periodically the EC would inform members which of their customers were returning required paperwork and which were not. A second, back-up coordinator was added to cover for the EC when she was not at the office. This kept returned-call and scheduling delays to a minimum
FIGURE 5.1 Corporate Ergonomics Group logo, mission statement, and values.
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and helped maintain high customer satisfaction. The EC also helped the project manager communicate with the CEG, schedule meetings, and distribute the minutes.
Chair Fittings
In addition to the standard office seating provided by the facilities people, the program offered 10 alternative models through a chair-fitting process. Customers set up times with the EC to visit either our ergonomics resources room or the medical center. Each had a full complement of sample chairs, so location was determined by proximity to the customer’s office and medical requirements. A CEG member would meet the customer, proceed through a series of questions concerning the job requirements, functional loss assessment, height and weight, and look up the ideal subset of chairs on a chart and then invite the customer to try out the models in that subset. After some sitting and some adjusting, the fitter and the sitter would mutually agree on the best chair. In many cases, models would be ordered with larger or smaller seat pans, different foam, adjustable lumbar supports, or other options based on customer needs and preferences. Affordability and appropriateness were determined by the customers’
management. Using this process, the CEG reduced the delay in acquiring custom ergonomic task chairs from 2 to 9 months to 4 to 6 weeks, with special medically related rush orders taking only two weeks. Company policy allowed customers to keep their individual chairs regardless of subsequent moves within the company.
In the rare event that a customer was dissatisfied after chair delivery, we determined if the CEG had made an error in prescribing the chair, and if so, the chair was reapplied and another chair was provided at no charge.
Worksite Evaluations
As in any active ergonomics program, CEG members went to the customers’ worksites to assess the materials, tools, processes, and environment for musculoskeletal stressors or other factors that could lead to work-related musculoskeletal disorders or inefficient operations. This service was considered to be the backbone of the program. The flow of the process, from initial call to final paperwork is shown in Figure 5.2.
Having not found a suitable checklist off-the-shelf, the CEG developed its own four-page, graphically based, field checklist, partially displayed in Figure 5.3. It served as a guidance and data-collection tool that was refined iteratively, using field experience. In addition to customer information, existing ergo- nomic equipment and furniture, tasks and durations, postures, office layout, and existing workstation measurements were recorded. The last section provided space for recommendations. A similar checklist was developed for non-office work environments.
Prior to performing WSEs, new evaluators attended professional training classes, read a guidelines document, and accompanied senior ergonomists on WSE calls. Eventually, the new evaluators performed the WSE under the guidance of the senior member, and when both were confident, the fledgling was allowed to fly solo. The author felt this was an important safeguard to reduce the liability of giving a customer bad advice on how to work. Typically, a CEG member performed about three WSEs a week, which would take about a half-day. This relatively light level of effort allowed the program to tap into existing laboratory personnel resources and avoid the need to hire new staff.
Occasionally, an entire work area or department was identified for evaluation. In these cases, several team members met with department representatives to form a joint project team to investigate ergonomic issues. We found that without involvement in developing solutions from the host organization, the best ideas had almost no chance of acceptance.
Resources Room
A resources room was set up to house the physical assets of the program (pamphlets, alternative keyboards, training materials, etc.) and provide space for chair fittings and analysis of videotaped jobs. The ergonomics video and text library was also housed in the resources room. A company vehicle was provided for transpor- tation to customer appointments throughout the technical areas of the laboratories, which cover 2830 acres.
FIGURE 5.2 Worksite evaluation process flow chart.
FIGURE 5.3 Section of worksite evaluation checklist. (From Nina Stewart-Poppelsdorf, CIH, CPE. Copyright Sandia National Laboratories, 1994. With permission.)
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Back Injury Reduction Program
The CEG, together with the medical department’s preventive health care program, developed courses and services for workers exposed to the physical stressors of material-handling and lifting tasks. One course was unique in that it embodied a long-term, behavior-modification approach to lifting. Partici- pants demonstrated lifting skills prior to and after a four-week curriculum of one hour per week. Follow- up sessions on job-relevant topics occurred every quarter for 18 months. Management incentives were designed to encourage maximum participation and onsite lifting coaching was provided on demand by exercise-physiology and physical-therapy interns.
Training
Three ergonomics courses were developed in-house: employee awareness, management awareness, and advanced ergonomics for environmental, safety, and health (ES&H) and facilities professionals. The employee course was designed for mass audiences and could be modified from 20 minutes to one hour in length. Musculoskeletal stressors were identified and CEG services described. Approximately ten minutes of the class were devoted to playing an in-house videotape entitled “Ergonomics Detective C.T.
Dodd” (Corporate Ergonomics Group, 1995). The video used a humorous “Mike Hammer” style to convey the concepts of ergonomics without inducing involuntary narcolepsy.
The managers’ course was designed to be given in small groups, as in director’s staff meetings. In addition to the basic concepts, injury and illness statistics for each organization are emphasized to cultivate sensitivity to lost-workday costs. Additionally, simplified surveillance checklists were added to the training materials so that managers could walk their spaces and identify musculoskeletal stressors before they became physical symptoms. The advanced course, which was four hours long, covered all the essentials and provided hands-on workstation evaluation and redesign techniques for staff who could use the skills in their regular work.
The CEG also instituted the Ergonomics Colloquium. About once a year, a well-known ergonomist would visit the CEG to consult on its development and present a one-hour colloquium to the laboratory staff on a technical topic of interest. Speakers were videotaped for people who could not attend the live colloquium. Dr. Roger Stephens from OSHA and Professor William Marras from The Ohio State Uni- versity were the colloquium speakers in 1994 and 1995, respectively.
Consulting
In addition to the bread-and-butter services outlined above, occasionally the CEG was called upon to provide consulting in unique situations. Several times we were asked to join teams tasked with redesigning work rooms or entire work areas, such as the classified document vault and document delivery service center in the technical library. Other projects included the mail room, shipping/receiving, the corporate computing center, and a hazardous waste management facility.
Medical Management
Communication and coordination on medical issues were facilitated by the fact that four members of the CEG were employed by the medical department: one doctor, two nurses, and a physical therapist.
Screening and diagnosis procedures for work-related musculoskeletal disorders were developed, docu- mented, and used by the primary care physicians. Onsite physical therapy was available, as well as an onsite optician, who filled prescriptions for VDT glasses. Due to lack of empirical evidence justifying lumbar belt usage, the company denied employees lumbar belts except when healing from an injury, and only if prescribed and fit by a health-care professional. A mutual referral system was instituted whereby if a symptomatic employee called for a WSE, he was referred to Medical, and if he showed up in Medical, he was referred to the EC for a WSE appointment.
work itself. One booklet was targeted directly at office-related tasks, while the other addressed stressors encountered at home. Finally, as is true of most large institutions, Sandia has a comprehensive ES&H Manual. The CEG, with help from its California colleagues, developed a manual chapter containing a complete set of ergonomic guidelines for office work (McMahon and Miller, 1995). The manual is now issued electronically on the Sandia intranet. Although none of these products was particularly innovative, excepting perhaps the exercise booklets, the concise format, familiar style, and repackaging of information made them extremely useful to Sandia employees.
Software
Throughout the program’s life, various software packages were evaluated for both CEG and customers’
use. We always looked at price and ease of use as foremost considerations in addition to functionality and time savings. Some of the packages we evaluated were more vaporware than actual product, and many of the legitimate, finished, commercial products were extremely difficult to use. Several were so costly that we decided we could do the work manually. We chose LifeGuard® for reminding serious computer users to take alternative-work breaks occasionally, and ErgoSmart® for general information in a question/answer format. Site licensing made these products affordable. In an unrelated feasibility project, the WSE checklist was programmed into a pen-based portable computer, designed for field data collection and automated database entry. Despite showing initial promise, problems with battery life and handwriting recognition software in the feasibility testing precluded implementation.