Relational and behavioral ergonomics - focusing on people
The needs of employees are increasingly coming to the fore from the perspective of health promotion and prevention. This is due to the well-known factors of demographic development and the shortage of skilled workers, as well as the trend towards work intensification and the resulting increase in mental illnesses such as burnout, depression and musculoskeletal disorders caused by lack of exercise and one-sided strain. The framework conditions are also increasingly changing due to new forms of work, such as the introduction of open office landscapes, desk sharing and the relocation of some work to the home office. On the production side, the increasing number of physically impaired employees, the rising average age of the workforce and the as yet unforeseeable consequences of digitalization – the buzzword is Industry 4.0 – are also coming to the fore.
When certifying ergonomic products, the Institute for Health and Ergonomics has already set out to investigate how products or services prove themselves in terms of their ergonomic effectiveness in everyday practice. Above all, whether they live up to the claim of providing benefits for most working people. This means that the most diverse individual characteristics in terms of height, weight, gender, age and health restrictions should be taken into account in order to meet the individual needs of the largest possible number of people when it comes to optimized ergonomic working conditions.
This includes work equipment in the sense of “relationship ergonomics” as well as measures that have a (sustainable) effect on people in the direction of healthier behavior, in the sense of so-called “behavioral ergonomics”.
These can be conditions, such as a more ergonomic design of work equipment, which induce healthier behavior, or simply the didactic influence on healthier behavior. For example, in the form of special training measures, targeted visualization (and thus simplification) of instructions, improved user guidance – keyword software ergonomics – or the optimization of operating instructions, etc.
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The IGR in figures
The IGR studies provide answers
This is immediately followed by the consideration of the above-mentioned effectiveness in terms of a period of time. What effect do measures have over longer periods of time? Can they bring about significant changes or improvements in behavior?
How are the measures evaluated by employees, line managers and also by company health management, HR or occupational safety personnel?
Can impairments be minimized? Concrete indicators such as the sickness rate provide information about this, as well as whether job satisfaction and motivation have been increased.
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Business results
Last but not least, the economic effects of ergonomics will also be examined. Here is an example from the production sector.
Employers are obliged to take suitable measures or use suitable work equipment in order to avoid stresses that pose a risk to the health of employees. Technical design solutions are available to prevent incorrect strain on the musculoskeletal system, particularly in the area of manual and industrial series production with regularly recurring work processes.
This applies all the more to employees who are only able to work to a limited extent due to a previous illness, accident, etc. External help must be provided. [Source: Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Dortmund]
Theoretically, it is possible to reintegrate physically impaired employees into normal shift work by taking specific measures on both the relationship and behavioral side. IGR field studies are investigating whether and how such support measures can be implemented in practice.
Example field study administration:
“Effectiveness of motivational software for electrically height-adjustable desks in the sense of the interaction between relationship and behavioral ergonomics.”
The design of the workplace has a direct influence on the behavior of the office worker. An obvious example: the use of electrically height-adjustable desks enables so-called sitting/standing dynamics. However, practice shows that after a short time, gravity gains the upper hand and work is increasingly done sitting down again. You can read how this phenomenon was countered and what measures were introduced to achieve healthy behavior in the latest press release from LINAK GmbH.
