Ergonomic Assessments

Employee Discomfort Survey

The Employee Discomfort Survey is one way of collecting information on worker perception about how difficult their job is in terms of physical demands and musculoskeletal disorder hazards. This survey can be administered on site, by department, or to your entire workplace. Distributing a survey is not only a proactive approach, but also an effective way in evaluating and following–up on your MSD controls.

Ergonomic Health and Safety Specialists

WSN’s Ergonomist/Health Specialist can conduct a variety of assessments to identify factors within a work system that may contribute to the development of MSDs and incidents/injuries. Once the ergonomic deficiencies of a work system have been identified, a number of modifications may be recommended to help improve the design of the work system. This will result in improved health and safety for all workers, improved productivity, improved quality results, and reduced costs.

Ergonomic Assessments

WSN’s Ergonomic Assessments is designed to help you recognize and prioritize ergonomic problem areas within your workplace. The assessment is performed by WSN’s Ergonomist/Health Specialist with input from workers. The primary aim of the ergonomic assessment is to identify problem jobs so that they can be prioritized for further action.

Ergonomic Needs Analysis

Through statistics, interviews, and a short site visit, our consultant trainers and ergonomic/health specialist identify factors within a work system (job tasks, workstation layouts, tools or equipment designs, etc.) that may contribute to the development of MSDs, contribute to incidents/injuries, impact productivity and/or quality, or otherwise negatively impact workers or the organization. Once we have a snapshot of the ergonomic deficiencies, an action plan for improvement can be recommended.

MSD Prevention Audit

This audit measures key ergonomics program elements found within musculoskeletal disorder (MSD) prevention. Your ergonomics program will be assessed in comparison to a “best practices” framework. Through a short interview and documentation review, the WSN Ergonomist/Health Specialist will quickly be able to assess gaps within your current system and provide direction to immediate priorities and opportunities for improvement. This audit and identification takes approximately two hours to complete.

MSD Prevention Assessment

This assessment is done to evaluate the risk of injury based on accepted ergonomic guidelines. We prioritize concerns according to the level of risk, and we work with your resources to develop solutions including designing tools, workstations, work processes and environments to optimize worker safety and health. If you have already identified your musculoskeletal disorder (MSD) risks/hazards and find implementing controls is a challenge, this comprehensive assessment will be your next step in MSD prevention.

WSN’s Ergonomist/Health Specialist will assist you by reviewing your MSD statistics, interviewing key workers, observing job tasks, and quantitatively assessing these tasks (3-5 hours). Practical solutions and controls will then be recommended through a final report and follow-up.

Physical Demands Descriptions

Our Physical Demands Descriptions (PDDs) are concise assessments of the essential and regular physical movements of the job. Each task is observed qualitatively (interview, visual, documents) and quantitatively (force and dimension measurements), complemented by digital photographs.

PDDs are an integral prevention tool to minimize MSD hazards, as well as a key component to matching essential duties with return to work. Our PDDs are validated by worker and management representatives to ensure accuracy and reliability.

Pre-Installation/Pre-Modification Ergonomic Reviews

It is unfortunate that most ergonomics is done reactively. It is much better to look at ergonomic issues before actually installing any type of system, process, workstation, or tool. WSN’s Ergonomist/Health Specialist can help you to identify a range of ergonomic issues prior to the installation or modification of any system in your workplace.