Prioritize Your Work
You may want to choose some specific ergonomic improvement options to try in your workplace. Setting your priorities will help you sort out which tasks you want to work on first. To do that, conduct ergonomics job hazard analyses (JHA) of hazardous tasks. JHAs focus on:
- worker variables (fitness, age)
- types of work (e.g., plant, warehouse, office, driving, etc.), and
- the work environment (e.g., lighting, cold exposures).
To determine which tasks you want to address first, consider the following:
- frequency and severity of complaints, symptoms, and injuries
- contributing factors or other problems you have identified in a task
- ideas your employees have for improvements
- difficulty of implementing various improvements
- your time frame for making improvements
- potential effects on productivity, efficiency, and product or service quality
- technical and financial resources at your disposal
For more information on general ergonomic factors in the workplace, please see OSHAcademy courses: 711 Introduction to Ergonomics, 722 Ergonomics Program Management, and 706 Conducting a Job Hazard Analysis (JHA).
Knowledge Check Choose the best answer for the question.
2-10. What should you do to set priorities so that you can determine what jobs to work on first?
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