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First and foremost, let's not forget that the primary statement from OSHA related to moving and handling people, is that A, manual lifting of materials and repetitive movements should be minimized in all cases, and eliminated whenever feasible. We do this by eliminating any conditions that would require manual movement or lifting of objects, and by implementing proper lifting devices. B, employers implement and effective ergonomics process that provides management support, involves employees, identifies problems, implements solutions, addresses reports of injuries, provides training, and evaluates ergonomic efforts. You may be asking yourself, well how do I recognize conditions that may lead to musculoskeletal disorders? Well there are several approaches that may be used to determine whether conditions in the work place might be contributing to an employees developing MSDs. That's musculoskeletal disorders, but we'll be abbreviating that. First, review and analyze injury and illness records. In doing this, you're looking for patterns of ergonomically related injuries. These could be certain jobs or work task specific. Keep an eye on your injury reporting, your OSHA 300 log, and supporting 301 forms will also appoint a way to where your problem spots might be. Workers' compensation claims. It's always important to analyze the jobs, or work tasks to identify potential future ergonomic problems before actual injuries, especially reportable injuries occur. Your workers' compensation reports will definitely help you discover where your problem areas are. Determine if jobs present ergonomic risks that may contribute to musculoskeletal disorders. Several ways to do this include analysis tools. These analysis tools may help in analyzing jobs. While there's no one size fits all approach, there are numerous non-OSHA voluntary analysis tools that may be used to learn more about potential ergonomic risks associated with jobs. Seek your employee input about the existence of ergonomic problems, that may be related to particular jobs or work tasks. Just ask 'em. They'll definitely tell you if something is giving them pain, or causing problems. Some ideas on how this may be accomplished would include, just speaking with the employee themselves. Conducting symptom surveys, employee questionnaires, and being aware of common contributing conditions. Which might mean you're gonna have to check with other companies in your same industry, and see if they have ergonomic related problems. And if so, it may be likely that these potential problems are also going to affect your industry. Obtain information from others, and see what the problems they've had, and how they fixed those problems. This will help you gain a better understanding of potential problems that may exist in your work place, and ways, again, that they've prevented those injuries, or fixed the problems in the problematic work tasks that produced those musculoskeletal disorders.
Manual lifting of materials and repetitive movements should be eliminated when feasible or minimized. Conditions in the workplace need to be analyzed to see what may be leading to injuries. Reports, injury logs, and worker compensation claims can help discover where problem areas are. Identified risk areas need to be fixed to protect workers from injury and employers from needless costs.