Manual material handling jobs require movement and physical activity. Handling containers may expose workers to physical conditions (e.g., force, awkward postures, and repetitive motions) that can lead to injuries, wasted energy, and wasted time.

Solutions include improving the fit between the demands of work tasks and the capabilities of your workers. Remember, workers’ abilities to perform work tasks may vary because of differences in age, physical condition, strength, gender, stature, and other factors.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health suggests changing your workplace to improve its fit for your workers can:
• Reduce or prevent injuries;
• Reduce workers’ efforts by decreasing forces in lifting, handling, pushing and pulling materials;
• Reduce risk factors for musculoskeletal disorders (e.g., awkward postures from reaching into containers);
• Increasing productivity, product and service quality, and worker morale;
• Lowering costs by reducing or eliminating production bottlenecks, error rates or rejects, use of medical services because of musculoskeletal disorders, workers’ compensation claims, excessive worker turnover, absenteeism, and retraining.
But how do you find out:
• Why workplace problems are occurring?
• Which work tasks may be causing injuries or production bottlenecks or decreasing product and service quality?
• What to do about problems once you find them?
• How to reduce your workers’ compensation costs?

Conduct an analysis and be proactive in your problem solving. Being proactive means finding the problems first by looking thoroughly around the workplace rather than waiting for problems to occur. Then improve the fit between the work and the worker by putting the appropriate changes into place. The process includes involving workers, observing jobs, making decisions on effective options, and then taking action. It is important to involve workers, managers, and supervisors throughout the process. There are four steps to a proactive action plan:

• Look for clues;

• Prioritize jobs for improvements;

• Make improvements;

• Follow up.

Step 1: Look for Clues

a. Review written records (e.g., OSHA Log 300, past worker reports or complaints, and workers’ compensation reports). Your workers’ compensation insurance carrier may offer risk-management services that can provide workplace assessment surveys.

b. Observe work activities. Talk to workers, supervisors, and managers about where problems exist. Look for warning signs, such as: Risk factors in work tasks (e.g., awkward postures, repetitive motions, forceful exertions, pressure points, staying in the same position for a long time);

• Worker fatigue, discomfort, or reports of related problems;

• Workers exhibiting “pain behaviors” (e.g., not moving body parts, self-restricting their movements, or massaging hands, arms, legs, necks, or backs); • Workers modifying tools, equipment, or workstations on their own;

• Increase in absenteeism, worker turnover rates, or customer complaints;

• Decrease in product or service quality or employee morale;

 • Increase in error rates, rejects, or wasted materials;

• Production bottlenecks;

• Malfunctioning equipment;

• Missed deadlines;

• Unnecessary handling and duplication of material and product movement.

Make sure to talk to your workers about their ideas for altering work processes, operations, tools, or equipment. Ask them how they would make their jobs less physically demanding and more efficient. c. Use assessment tools to determine where problems may arise in work tasks, you may want to use some of the following:

• NIOSH Manual Material Handling Checklist;

• NIOSH Hazard Evaluation Checklist for Lifting, Pushing, or Pulling;

• The Awareness Worksheet: Looking for Clues;

• Ergonomics Checklist - Material Handling. If the problems are complex, methods that are more sophisticated may be needed for addressing your workplace MSDs. More detailed assessment tools for specific problems include:

• NIOSH Lifting Equation;

• American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH);

• Threshold;

• Limit Values (TLVs) for Manual Lifting;

• University of Michigan 3D Static Strength Prediction Program;

• Ohio State University Lumbar Motion Monitor;

• Snook’s Psychophysical Tables.

Step 2: Prioritize Jobs for Improvements

After detecting the problems, decide which tasks to improve and then set priorities. Consider:

• The frequency and severity of the risk factors you have identified that may lead to injuries;

• The frequency and severity of complaints, symptoms, and/or injuries;

• Technical and financial resources at your disposal;

• Ideas of workers for making improvements;

• Difficulty in implementing various improvements;

• Timeframe for making improvements.

Step 3: Make Improvements

The goal of making changes is to improve the fit between the demands of work tasks and the capabilities of your workers. Combine operations and processes whenever possible to reduce or eliminate unnecessary manual handling of materials and products. Depending on the characteristics of the work and the workers, there may be some changes that will improve a particular task.

Step 4: Follow Up

It’s important to follow up in order to evaluate if your improvements have worked. After a reasonable adjustment period, set a date to follow up on the changes made. Make sure to evaluate each improvement separately for effectiveness. The following questions may be helpful:

Has each improvement:

• Reduced or eliminated fatigue, discomfort, symptoms, and/or injuries?

• Been accepted by workers?

• Reduced or eliminated most or all of the risk factors?

• Caused any new risk factors, hazards, or other problems?

• Caused a decrease in productivity and efficiency?

• Caused a decrease in product and service quality?

• Been supported with the training needed to make it effective? If you determine that, your improvements have not worked, modify them or try something different until the risk factors have been reduced or eliminated. FSM