30 years of ergonomics at 3M: a case study

The added value of the Ergonomics Program at 3M was found to be improved employee safety, compliance with regulations and reduction of work-related illness, increases in productivity, and quality and operating efficiency. This paper describes the thirty years of existence of this program. For the first twenty years, the program objectives were to: respond to requests for assistance related to work-related musculoskeletal disorder (WMSD) concerns, raise employee awareness of MSDs and ergonomics; educate engineers in ergonomics design; and develop ergonomics teams at manufacturing locations. Since the year 2000, 3M's Ergonomics Program has been in transition from a US-centric and corporate-based technical-expertled program to a global program applying participatory ergonomics strategies within a macroergonomics framework. During that transition, the existing program requirements were revised, new methods and program tools were created, and expectations for implementation at the manufacturing locations clarified. This paper focuses on the company's manufacturing ergonomics program activities during the past ten years and includes specifics of the program's objectives, risk assessment reduction process, and ergonomics technical expertise development. The main benefit achieved throughout the company is reducing employee injury while also increasing productivity and operating efficiency.     

Inclusion of people with disabilities in the production system of a footwear industry

This article presents a study on the inclusion of people with disabilities (mainly mental impairment) in the workforce of a shoe company. The items that could impact on the success of inclusion were identified, and this included employees and other individuals taking part in the process. The inclusion process identified the interests, likes and dislikes of each employee with disabilities and correlated these with the activities available in the company. The case study evaluated the quality of the inclusion through interviews, questionnaires and an assessment of production efficiency. The results showed that inclusion did not adversely affect production, and highlighted that staff with disabilities do their work correctly. According to all employees interviewed, the inclusion of staff with disabilities improved the relationship of the boss with all of the staff and also led to the work environment being enhanced. The final evaluation is that the company's policy of inclusion succeeded.     

Contributions of participatory ergonomics to the improvement of safety culture in an industrial context

This paper presents the results of an ergonomic intervention conducted within a blast furnace plant. As part of its risk prevention program, the company decided to set up an action plan, in a participatory manner, by setting up working groups to solve health & safety issues. This field mission involved 230 employees, 80 of whom participated actively by being incorporated into working groups. After four months of intervention, a questionnaire survey has been conducted among employees to study the effects of participation on the safety climate. The results seem promising and show that the benefits of participation are numerous: a more positive safety climate associated to safer attitudes and behaviors. However, rather than just participation, it seems to be the employee involvement in the working groups and the satisfaction they derive from their participation that guarantee these positive results. Hence, participatory ergonomics seems to be an effective way to decrease the number of unsafe behaviors at work, provided that the type of participation has been previously well defined and organized according to the specific context of each organization.     

The RFad Method--a new fatigue recovery time assessment for industrial activities

This paper presents a study about fatigue recovery time assessment processes in work activities. It came about due to a demand presented by an automotive industry giant, in need of updating existing cycle time sheets and TAKT time parameters. The company decided to hire an Ergonomics Laboratory with ties to a major Brazilian University in order to evaluate current conditions and establish a new method to either calculate recovery times or validate existing assessment criteria, based in the ergonomics evaluation of the work activities. It is clear that there has been evident evolution in the industrial sector in the past two decades. It brought up fast modernization of industrial processes, not only in production but also in terms of management systems. Due to improved computer and robotics systems, combined with overall operational advancements - like the use of lighter hand tools and more effective hoist systems - most work activities have had its physical effort requirements reduced in the past decades. Thus, compensation factors built into production times need to be reviewed in order to avoid unnecessary costs associated to them. By using ergonomics considerations, we prevent simply removing the physical variables built in rest time calculations without taking on account, for example, additional cognitive load represented by the use of more sophisticated pieces of equipment.     

‘You care for your work; I'll care for your family’: perceptions of paternalistic managerial actions and employee commitment in Mexico

This study focuses on paternalism as a managerial strategy to foster employee commitment. Using in-depth, qualitative interviews during extended fieldwork at a Mexican multinational company, I examine employee perceptions of managerial actions within the context of workplace transformation. Employees perceived management as caring toward them and their families and characterized the workplace as a considerate and respectful environment. Employees interpreted managerial actions positively because a company cooperative provided family-supportive policies and cultivated a family-supportive culture, even after workplace transformation. Rather than disrupt the paternalistic practices, management combined them with the new strategic management practices. In exchange, employees were committed to the organization as evidenced by expressions of loyalty, pride, and appreciation. With its focus on how a specific family-supportive setting matters in the global south, this study extends the research on managerial strategies to promote employee commitment.     

Casting an ergonomic eye on university libraries

Research in the field of Ergonomics of the Built Environment has been developed with a view to consolidating studies in this area, the objective of which is to provide evidence that the joint participation of users and designers on drawing up projects is important. In this context, the theme of this study is to investigate the interactions between users and the environment in a university library. To do so, well-established techniques from Ergonomics, Architecture and Environmental Psychology were used to make a functional and behavioral evaluation to identify the level of user satisfaction in six libraries in the various study centers of the Federal University of Pernambuco in Recife, northeast Brazil, so as to identify the strengths and also weaknesses in these spatial structures.     

A literature review about usability evaluation methods for e-learning platforms

The usability analysis of information systems has been the target of several research studies over the past thirty years. These studies have highlighted a great diversity of points of view, including researchers from different scientific areas such as Ergonomics, Computer Science, Design and Education. Within the domain of information ergonomics, the study of tools and methods used for usability evaluation dedicated to E-learning presents evidence that there is a continuous and dynamic evolution of E-learning systems, in many different contexts -academics and corporative. These systems, also known as LMS (Learning Management Systems), can be classified according to their educational goals and their technological features. However, in these systems the usability issues are related with the relationship/interactions between user and system in the user's context. This review is a synthesis of research project about Information Ergonomics and embraces three dimensions, namely the methods, models and frameworks that have been applied to evaluate LMS. The study also includes the main usability criteria and heuristics used. The obtained results show a notorious change in the paradigms of usability, with which it will be possible to discuss about the studies carried out by different researchers that were focused on usability ergonomic principles aimed at E-learning.     

Managing organisational change: the "gendered" organisation of space and time

Although the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) maintains a strong commitment to gender equity in its anti-poverty programs, a conservative external environment often impedes efforts to make its organizational structure consistent with this commitment. For example, BRAC's approach to organizing its field operations has been to abolish the distinction between home and office. BRAC's female employees live with male colleagues in their rural offices, travel long distances on bicycles and motorcycles, and reject the sari--practices that are antithetical to the prevailing culture and place tremendous pressure on these field workers. The high work intensity, need to work beyond normal business hours, and lack of on-site child care subjects married female employees to hostility from their husbands and relatives. Single female employees are often regarded as unmarriagable because of their divergent life-styles. Although BRAC makes provisions for employees to take leave for family responsibilities, staff who access this benefit are viewed as more committed to family than their work. The sexual activities of female--but not male--employees are scrutinized. Despite these contradictions, BRAC's innovative arrangements model a new form of gender relations in rural areas. BRAC is enabling its young women employees to postpone marriage and demonstrate a nontraditional role. The extent to which BRAC should take responsibility for compensating for the constraints imposed on women by patriarchy remains problematic. Working conditions could be improved, however, by allowing women to be near their families, domesticating the work environment, and respecting women's personal lives.     

Listening Environment and the Bottom Line: How a Positive Environment Can Improve Financial Outcomes

Amidst the onslaught of communication at work, employees’ voices can be neglected in favor of the bottom line. This research initiates an exploration of the relationship between employee perceptions of the listening environment at work and organizational financial performance indicators. In this exploratory pilot study, we collected data from N = 65 employees of a single firm with multiple geographically and financially independent units. Using simple regression analysis, researchers compared data between units to determine if employee perceptions of positive qualities of the listening climate are related to improvement in sales and net income. Results suggest a potentially positive relationship between employees’ perceptions of a positive listening environment and these organizational performance indicators, suggesting that listening is an important step in building the communication climate of a productive company.     

Overview of ergonomics built environment

This article provides an overview of academic research in the scientific discipline of ergonomics in the context of the built environment, from data collected from journals, conferences and research groups whose focus is the theme of the Ergonomics of Built Environment. Starting from the context of the Ergonomics of Built Environment, it identifies the broadcast media who publish work in this area and its scientific production, seeking to recover from the first published papers to the production of the most recent scientific journals and conferences to be launched 2010. From this mapping, we identified the major outstanding and open issues in these studies, outlining the state of the art Ergonomics Built Environment, in order to inform those interested and intend to develop scientific research in this field.     

The Role of Needs Assessment in the Design of Employee Assistance Programs:

This paper describes the value of a multimethod needs assessment in developing and tailoring an employee assistance program (EAP) to the particular characteristics, problems, and resources of an organization and then provides an illustration of an EAP needs assessment conducted for a city municipality. Unique concerns of city employees, and the specific EAP programs designed to address these concerns, are highlighted.     

Installing Circuit Breakers: Mechanisms to Avoid Sexual Harassment in the Workplace

This paper suggests that a synergy is both possible and necessary between two traditionally distinct management approaches: the Weberian approach, which contends that the bureaucratic structure of a company affects the daily activities of employees, and the human relations model, which holds that small group leadership dynamics at the divisional/department level affects daily activities of employees. The tendency within organizations is to promote one approach over the other. A resolution to the debate is suggested in applying mechanisms to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. Indeed, the courts have inadvertently pointed the way: the reasonable woman standard urges a human relations approach to resolving the problem of sexual harassment, placing the burden of solving the problem on supervisor personnel and their ability to direct their employee's behavior; the hostile environment issues promotes a Weberian structural solution, requiring sound policy be developed at the executive level to ensure workplace compliance to appropriate normative behavior. A one-sided approach is doomed to failure, which may explain why the issue continues to rage in the corporate sphere.     

Case Studies of Federal Occupational Health's EAP Responses to Natural Disasters

Summary

Employee assistance professionals have increasingly been called upon to address the emotional and mental health needs of customer organizations and their employees in response to large-scale natural or man-made disasters. In doing so, employee assistance program (EAP) professionals must use a repertoire of responses that encompasses a broad range of interventions, generally anchored in an understanding of and focus on the organization and its culture, mission, management and labor concerns, and other critical characteristics. The EAP's fallback response to a crisis affecting the workplace is often a critical incident stress debriefing or close variant of it. However, EAPs can best serve their customers at all levels with interventions attuned to an understanding of the workplace culture gained through a consultative relationship with management, while factoring in the nature of the disaster, the length of time and characteristics of the disaster's aftermath, and the nuances of the employees' physical and emotional needs throughout the entire disaster response and recovery process.

This article highlights these issues through the presentation of two case studies, gained from the hurricane response activities of the Federal Occupational Health (FOH) EAP. FOH, a service unit within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Program Support Center, has 60 years of experience working in partnership with its federal agency customers to deliver comprehensive occupational health services to improve the health, safety, and productivity of the federal workforce. FOH's EAP contracts with vendor organizations to provide direct employee assistance, work/life, and related services to more than 1.3 million federal employees. The first case study describes (from the first person perspective) an on-site, multi-focused EAP intervention at a federal facility. The second case study describes management consultation with the U.S. Postal Service in response to major hurricane activity.     

Employees’ prosocial behavioral intentions through empowerment in CSR decision-making

This study theorizes and empirically tests a conceptual framework to understand how a company can better motivate its employees to carry out persistent prosocial behavior and develop positive organization-employee relationships through corporate social responsibility (CSR) involvement. A managerial approach, employee participative decision making in CSR, is examined for its impact on the prosocial behavioral outcome among employees and the relational outcome for the organization. Furthermore, a psychological mechanism that emphasizes employees’ perceived need satisfaction is examined as the underlying explanation that drives the effectiveness of the managerial approach. The study results support that empowering employees to co-construct CSR decisions with top management is effective in satisfying employees’ basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. This in turn increases the employees’ intention to maintain long-lasting involvement in CSR and improves their relationships with the company. This study provides important implications for public relations professionals and organizational leaders on how to improve their internal CSR communication and involvement practice and cultivate desirable organization-employee relationships.     

Perception differences between groups of employees identifying the factors that influence a return to work after a work-related musculoskeletal injury

Employee health and productivity losses as a result of work-related injury are estimated to be US dollars 1.2 trillion annually to US companies. This is approximately 14.3% of the gross domestic product [6,8,11,35]. Workers' compensation, medical care, and short and long-term disability are a part of these costs. Controlling or eliminating these costs is a problem for US employers [3,6,14,21,29]. The study discussed in this article examined the perceptions of manufacturing employees in identifying factors that influence a return to work after a work-related musculoskeletal injury. The classification of employees who participated in this study were safety professionals, supervisors and workers from the manufacturing industry in central Kentucky. The worker group consisted of material handlers, assembly line workers and quality control inspectors. The participants completed a developed survey instrument, the Return to Work Perception Survey. This survey instrument examined the perception of the participants on factors related to return to work: company policies and procedures, job satisfaction, worker relationships and work environment. The results indicated safety professionals and supervisors perceptions differ from workers on the variables of job satisfaction, worker relationships and work environment. Their perceptions did not differ on the variable relating to company policies and procedures. In addition, the safety professional and supervisor groups rated the items addressing job satisfaction higher than did the worker group. The worker group did not differ from one another on any of the factors. Implications of this study for manufacturing companies suggest (a). identifying those issues contributing to employee job satisfaction, (b). developing a plan for achieving increased job satisfaction and employee recognition at the workplace among all workers, and (c). consider allowing employees to develop new capacities and new learning, thus fostering motivation and job satisfaction [18,20].     

Privatisation and economism: an investigation amongst 'producers' in two privatised public utilities in Britain

Both academic and political debate about the effects of privatisation upon employees in privatised companies has taken place in something of an empirical vacuum. In particular, there is a lack of systematic enquiries into the major privatised utilities. Despite the lack of evidence, a number of claims have been advanced, both about the impact of privatisation upon the political attitudes of employees, and about its effects on working conditions, worker motivation and behaviour. This paper presents the results of a survey of 442 employees in two privatised public utilities. It is divided into two parts, looking first at the more general social and political attitudes of these employees, then presenting their views on the impact of privatisation on the company they work for, and on their working lives. The findings reported here lend little support either to new right claims about privatisation's transformative powers or to the view that ‘for most people … privatisation will make very little difference at all’ (Saunders and Harris, 1990).     

Work-site health and fitness programs: Impact on the employee and employer

Physical fitness and health lifestyle habits have been reported to lower the risk of death from disease, foster healthy muscles, joints and bones, and enhance personal function and mental health. Given these benefits, many employers are implementing health and fitness programs into their workplace with the goals of improving and maintaining the health of their employees and increasing worker productivity. However, research is still being conducted to determine if these programs are an effective means of achieving these goals. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of these programs on employee physical and mental health, employee work performance, and the employer. This paper also investigates the effectiveness of the specific program structures and intervention procedures that were used in the employee health and fitness programs that have been implemented. STUDY DESIGN: This paper analyzed 15 previously conducted studies to investigate the impact and design of employee health and fitness programs. RESULTS: The reviewed literature suggests that the incorporation of an employee health and fitness program can have positive effects for both the employee and the employer. Programs that are structured using a variety of physical fitness programs, health education classes, outreach and one on one counseling with follow up contact have proven to be most beneficial in terms of employee and employer satisfaction. CONCLUSION: The implementation of an employee health and fitness program can have positive lasting effects on both the employee and employer. In addition to implementing programs that offer a variety of choices and one on one counseling, employers would benefit from targeting the at-risk population to ensure that the programs benefit the greatest number of employees possible.     

Path-Goal Theory: A Successful Columbia Records Story

This analysis applies the principles of path-goal theory to a renowned music recording company, Columbia Records. By and large, path-goal theory posits that leaders can positively inspire the performance, contentment, and motivation of their employees by clarifying the path on how to achieve performance goals, bestowing rewards for achieving these goals, and removing obstacles that are stopping employees from achieving these goals. A major conclusion of this analysis is that, by thoroughly applying the multiple styles and tenets that path-goal theory offers, Columbia Records executives and chairmen have made this music recording company the most successful in history.     

Gaming Industry Employees’ Responses to Responsible Gambling Training: A Public Health Imperative

Gaming industry employees work in settings that create personal health risks. They also have direct contact with customers who might engage in multiple risky activities (e.g., drinking, smoking, and gambling) and might need to facilitate help-seeking by patrons or co-workers who experience problems. Consequently, the empirical examination of the processes and procedures designed to prepare employees for such complex situations is a public health imperative. In the current study we describe an evaluation of the Casino, Inc. Play Responsibly responsible gaming program. We surveyed 217 employees prior to and 1 month after (n = 116) they completed a multimedia driven responsible gambling training program. We observed that employees improved their knowledge of responsible gambling concepts from baseline to follow-up. The Play Responsibly program was more successful in providing new knowledge than it was in correcting mistaken beliefs that existed prior to training. We conclude, generally, that Play Responsibly is associated with increases in employees’ responsible gambling knowledge.