HR specialists tuning into ergonomics for the disabled
By Herb Drill
There is no instinct
like tat of the heart
--Lord Byron
JACKSONVILLE, FL - You should take heart in the fact there are companies and organization which understand your need for ergonomically-correct facilities to be productive as an employee or someone who is self-employed.
Plus, there actually are Human Resource officers who comprehend Mike O'Shea, of New York City-based Currie] & Brown Group, whose “white paper” on facilities management stated, in part: “The pace of change and tough markets has put the cost of managing facilities under the microscope.” New York-based Currie & Brown provides construction cost, project, and risk management advice in 47 countries and on more than $7billion of capital project expenditures in the U.S.
While high space utilization at a low cost factor will always make the facilities guys look good, it seems more HR managers and CEOs - at least in northeast Florida - look at all of those gray cubicles with little warmth and seek space and design which reflect growth, relatively good economic times, and corporate vision. They see drawing topflight talent for targeted industries being made easier if the physical environment is as attractive and comfortable as it is efficient.
Mark Roesser knows all abut that. A quadriplegic, he’s a v ice president of investments in the Jacksonville Bach offices of Atlanta-based J.P. Turner & Co. His office, his computer work station, his work environment are ergonomically-correct. That’s partly the result of the ADA and of efforts by people like Catherine Steckner, who deals with, among other tings, the ADA and benefits and health-care costs Carolina Casualty Insurance Co., in Jacksonville. Also, she’s president of the Jacksonville chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM, www.shrm.org).
SHRM has more than 170,000 individual professional and student members worldwide, Steckner says, and as a group believes employers should be “responsible leaders, promote a safe and healthy workplace, and support regulations which can have a direct impact on reducing workplace accidents and illnesses.” However, SHRM “strongly opposes” ergonomic measures, including such facilities management, which would “impair employer-employee cooperation, impose unnecessarily high costs on employers, or increase litigation.” Programs from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Heal Administration (OSHA) should “neither create an adversarial workplace environment without addressing real improvements to workplace safety nor hinder the cooperative and voluntary nature of existing programs.”
While the U.S. Department of Labor seeks a definition of “ergonomics injury” which OSHA, employers, and employees can understand and apply, SHRM says the term and theory behind ergonomics has lead the medical field to suggest there is “no evidence of an applicable definition” on ergonomics. Steckner says her counterparts contend "ergonomics injury" is a “paradox since ergonomics is the process of correcting a practice or operation which causes an injury.”
She says a recent survey by SHRM’s Employment Policy Foundation (EPF) concluded that implementing OSHA’s ergonomics standards would cost U.S. businesses an average of $91 billion each year and hit small businesses hardest. EPF claims OSHA justifies its guidelines based on "an outdated survey of voluntary industry ergonomic safety initiatives."
Then, there’s the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). On Jan. 10, 2002, Suzanne Robitaille, who writes “Assistive Technology” only for Business Week Online, noted that while advocates decried the Jan. 8 U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the ADA, “it's really a boon to employers and employees alike. The decision imposed new limits on how far employers must go to accommodate a disability under the ADA,” and Robitaille viewed the decision “in keeping with the spirit of the ADA. [It] ensures the law will protect those who need it most.”
In the High Court ruling in Toyota v. Williams, the court sided with a unit of Toyota Motor Manufacturing based in the southeast U.S. which refused to tailor a job for an assembly-line worker who claimed she developed carpal tunnel syndrome on the job. In its unanimous decision, the High Court held Ella Williams' condition didn’t meet the ADA's definition of a disability because it hadn’t "substantially limit[ed]" any "major life [activity]."
Robitaille, who is deaf, argues the Supreme Court “didn't undermine the ADA’s basic architecture designed to encourage employers to hire people with physical impairments. “Rather, the ruling makes clear that [an impairment] must affect a range of manual tasks or duties, not just job-specific ones. And if you have [an impairment] under the law, your employer must provide `reasonable accommodation’ for you to be a productive worker,” she wrote.
People who are paraplegics, quadriplegics, or have Spinal Cord Injury are of concern to Joan Altavilla, occupational hazard specialist for Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Florida (BCBSF) in Jacksonville. She points out that while ergonomics usually falls into the worker compensation coverage arena her agency has examined this area “extensively” and has “modified” its own ways of doing business. “We’ve always had an interest” in ergonomics guidelines from OSHA, which originated in the meat-packing industry.” She says BCBSF was scheduled to publish its own ergonomic guidelines in December, but cautions, “What is spent for ergonomically-correct facilities is less important than how what is purchased is used. A $5,000 chair is no better than a $5 chair if you don’t use it the way it was intended to be used.”
On the issue’s corporate side is Rick Laughridge, of KI (formerly Krueger[CQ] International). He says, “These are turbulent economic times. Facilities managers must create a comfortable work environment, mentally and physically, to increase productivity” and help foster an economic rebound.”
KI, along with companies such as Steelcase Inc. and Summerland Group, understand issues which auger facilities management changes. Work areas must be conducive to more effort, longer hours. For its clients, Stuart, Fla.-based Summerland’s The Office?™ has a “fully-wired, fully-mobile, self-contained product” for “ergonomically-correct placement within the unit of electric, electronic, and mechanical components, plus functional task areas.” Summerland makes computer furnishings for home, business, industry, and education. Summerland, basically an engineering firm, turns out armoire-style computer furniture and compact, convertible, wireless and network-ready, accessible computer furniture.
Chicago-based Steelcase utilizes its seminar, “HotHouse Environments: Fostering Breakthrough Innovations,” to garner data from more than 1,500 corporate executives, facilities managers, and design professionals. The company has used the information to help produce the Pathways line of work surfaces, supports, mobile tables, and other products.
In May, Green Bay, Wis.-based KI was chosen to furnish 600 ergonomically-correct workstations in the new 240,000-square-foot Baton Rouge, La., headquarters for Shaw Group, one of the largest suppliers of fabricated piping systems in the U.S. Included is KI’s WireWorks® panel system for workstations, and Laughridge says the panels “meet the challenge of moving people, furniture, and power and data lines as companies grow, reconfigure, and relocate without disturbing adjacent panels or data.”
A month later, KI introduced the Wharton LecternTM. Developed with the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, it has electronic height adjustments and a panel to alter room lighting, plus controls for presentation applications and Internet access.
Even municipalities get involved.
Sherry Ellison, community outreach coordinator for the Public Works Department of the City of Jacksonville, says the city’s program began in October 1999 as a “proactive effort to help prevent work-related musculoskeletal injuries,” especially for employees with physical impairments. “The city contracted with Golder Associates and targeted employees who worked at a computer for a portion of their day to conduct a training designed to educate employees on what ergonomics is, what can be considered an injury, and the proper techniques and tools which should be used to prevent injury.”
After the training, each employee's work station was assessed to determine if the station was “ergonomically correct; if it wasn't, what tools and techniques were needed to correct the situation,” Ellison adds. “Reports were generated from each assessment and distributed to the appropriate department head for action, including ordering necessary furniture. Training and assessment is being done for employees who work in the field. Following the training, an assessment is performed to determine if the employee has the right tools they need to prevent injury. New employees are trained and assessed within 30 days of being hired.”
From another vantage point, Vince McCormack, of Perdue Office Interiors in Jacksonville, observes, “Manufacturers continue to emphasize ergonomics in seating; however, the adjustments in the past several years - such as adjustable arms, lumbar support, and adjustable seat depth - have remained the same. The focus has shifted more towards properly training users on adjustments. Studies have shown users who were trained to adjust their chairs properly showed significant reductions in discomfort and fatigue during the workday."
There’s another issue related to facilities management, according to Laughridge, who is KI’s northern and central Florida district manager. He says more disabling injuries among younger people and baby-boomers who have a notion of retiring early will work with increasing ailments and aging bodies. They’ll need more comfortable workplace facilities. “Even worse,” he notes, employers who don’t see a need for ergonomically-correct facilities may be violating the ADA and even stricter guidelines in states such as Florida.
Access to jobs and all types of facilities should matter to every business, says Patrick Hughes, who heads Chicago-based Inclusion Solutions, because it “attracts new customers and affects your bottom line. If your business isn’t comfortable for your employees and accessible to potential customers, you’re overlooking a powerful base.” The physically-impaired represent “the single largest minority group in the U.S., with more than $175 billion in disposable income,” he emphasizes. “The right decisions make your business ergonomically-correct and accessible for people without physical impairments or with them and matters fort your image. Opening your doors to customers [without barriers] is an important part of being socially responsible. Consumers reward businesses they perceive supporting causes and concerns.”
Hughes emphasizes the benefits of proper facilities management are “great. In addition to protection from litigation” businesses make employees more comfortable and productive; making it more accessible is the right thing to do."
Rachel Casanova, design director for Raleigh/Durham, NC-headquartered Alfred Williams and Co. (part of Holland, MI-based Herman Miller Workplace Resource), claims “ergonomics is critical” because companies will realize “decreased absenteeism and lower medical claim costs when they incorporate healthy working environments” which consider “sizes, shapes, and needs of its employees.” Casanova sees ergonomics “equally important” in the design process. “An ergonomics program can start with something simple, such as asking individuals their height and setting their work surface accordingly. The effect on the employees and the company will be great.”
In his wheelchair, Jacksonville, FL resident Herb Drill is a charter member of the now international in membership Society of American Business Editors and Writers. His e-mail address is herbertdrill@cs.com
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More needs to be done
It’s reported that approximately two-thirds of people with physical impairments in the U.S. are unemployed; most of them want to work. Three in 10 working-age adults with impairments are employed full- or part-time versus eight in 10 adults without impairments. Working-age adults with impairments are no more likely to be employed today than they were a decade ago.
The Society for Human Resource Management has a “Toolkit” for members which states, “Focusing on persons with impairments as candidates for employment, as employees, and as consumers can positively impact HR's recruitment and retention efforts. The catalyst is no longer simply compliance or charity, but a better understanding of the value of diversity relative to competitive advantage and the diverse demographics of the future.”
The Toolkit contains suggestions such as:
- Appoint an ergonomics team for feedback on problem areas and to work on ergonomic projects.
- Name employees and management to the team and provide ongoing training.
- Assign team leaders from operations or engineering. Safety and health experts should be members.
- Develop an analysis system which allows the team to complete ergonomic evaluations of tasks, including identifying hazards, developing possible solutions, and implementing follow-up controls.
- Budget enough to complete the team's recommended redesigns.
- Develop voluntary guidelines and/or "best practices."
- Many organizations make accommodations for employees with impairments, including making existing facilities accessible, being flexible in applying HR policies, and restructuring jobs or modifying work hours. The cost of accommodations and training “were not seen as significant barriers.”
- Herb Drill