Understand the benefits and costs of ergonomics software so you can calculate a return on your investment. This will be helpful information to have as you make a decision yourself or if you need to persuade a decision-maker to get buy-in for your ergonomics software initiative.

“There is a theory behind why we do processes, there is a description of what we do, and most importantly there is an opportunity to always question what we do, and this is a radically different approach to business processes than the traditional one.”

— Steve Jobs

Making a change inside a large organization is difficult. Large enterprises are often compared to big ships with small rudders. They’re moving fast but it’s extraordinarily difficult to change their direction.

And for good reason. They need to reliably produce the output that helped them become a large enterprise in the first place. They are able to maintain this scale and volume of production through process and efficiency.

Even small changes are a short term threat to that efficiency. But we also know that if your company doesn’t innovate and embrace some degree of change it will inevitably decline. That kind of stasis opens the door for competitive threats and other market forces to threaten the business.

The Steve Jobs quote above exemplifies what it means to strike a balance between establishing processes that help you achieve high efficiency while also maintaining the awareness that it is highly likely that there is a better way. Striking this balance is how you can avoid the temptation to feed yesterday and starve tomorrow.

“The temptation in the existing business is to always feed yesterday and starve tomorrow. It is, of course, a deadly temptation. The enterprise that does not innovate inevitably ages and declines. And in a period of rapid change such as the present … the decline will be fast.”

— Peter Drucker

So even though change can be a short-term threat to efficiency, it is necessary for the long-term survival of your company.

Given the challenge of making a change within an organization, it’s important that you can clearly communicate the value of the change you seek. You have to make the case.

Many of our clients and customers have experienced the challenge of managing change in their organizations. They’ve had to make the case for ergonomics and comprehensive MSD prevention.

The good news is that when it comes to changing the way your ergonomics data is managed, it’s easy to build a case for using ergonomics software instead of paper methods and general-purpose tools.

But obviously I would say that, right? If you’re thinking I’m biased, you’re right. I am.

So let’s walk through it step-by-step, and you can decide for yourself if there is a compelling case for using ergonomics software to manage data instead of paper methods and general purpose tools.

How to Calculate the ROI of Ergonomics Software

Here is the formula you can use to calculate the return on your investment in ergonomics software.

Return on Investment = Benefits – Cost / Cost

So in order to run the calculation you need to understand and quantify the benefits and costs of using ergonomics software.

First, let’s talk about the benefits.

The Benefits of Using Ergonomics Software

The main benefit of using any software instead of any paper-based method or general-purpose tool is increased productivity.

The same holds true for ergonomics software. It makes you more productive. Specifically, it drastically reduces the administrative burden.

Now let’s quantify that. First, let’s identify all of the assumptions we’ll have to make to find the productivity benefit. (You’ll obviously want to tailor your ROI calculations for your specific situation, but I’ll generalize for the purpose of this article.)

Let’s assume that:

• You are dedicating 40 hours per week to ergonomics
• 20% of your time dedicated to ergonomics is spent on administrative tasks
• Ergonomics software can reduce the administrative burden by 50%
• The fully loaded cost of your time is $60/hour

Under those assumptions:

• You spend 8 hours of your time on administrative tasks (20% of your 40 hour week)
• Using ergonomics software, you cut that time down to 4 hours per week, saving 4 hours (50% of your 8 hours of administrative time)
• At a fully loaded cost of $60/hour, the 4 hours you saved from the productivity gain were worth $240.
• Over the course of the 50 work weeks in the year, that adds up to $12,000.

That’s a big win!

But maybe you’re skeptical or you don’t like my assumptions. That’s fair. Now let’s assume I’m way off on everything. Let’s cut every assumption in half.

Let’s assume that:

• You are dedicating 20 hours per week to ergonomics
• 10% of your time dedicated to ergonomics is spent on administrative tasks
• Ergonomics software can reduce the administrative burden by 25%
• The fully loaded cost of your time is $30/hour

Under those assumptions:

• You spend 2 hours of your time on administrative tasks (10% of your 20 hour week)
• Using ergonomics software, you cut that time down to 1.5 hours per week, saving 0.5 hours (25% of your 2 hours of administrative time)
• At a fully loaded cost of $30/hour, the 0.5 hours you saved from the productivity gain were worth $15.
• Over the course of the 50 work weeks in the year, that adds up to $750.

It’s not $12,000, but $750 still a win!

For most of you reading this, you’ll likely be somewhere in the middle of these ranges. The more you use it and the more your time is worth, the more the ergonomics software is going to save you.

Also keep in mind that the only benefit in this calculation was an increase in productivity. That’s not the whole story.

Other benefits of ergonomics software that weren’t included:

• Save on training. Built-in training and resources mean you don’t have to buy other education and training courses, hire an expensive consultant for training, or go to an expensive conference to get training. This easily saves you thousands of dollars and you can be sure that each member on your team is getting the same high-quality training.
• Make higher quality decisions. Having the right data always at your fingertips allows you to make better decisions and improve the effectiveness of your workplace ergonomics process. Better decisions lead to fewer injuries. Just one musculoskeletal disorder injury saved is over $70,000 in savings.
• Align the team. Providing your team with domain-specific software aligns them around shared training, tools, and information.
• Improve quality of life. Reducing administrative time improves quality of life. Let the computer do the mind-numbing admin work so you can go do what you do.

So while these benefits are not included in the example ROI calculation, there is a very real possibility that the net benefit of them is in the tens of thousands of dollars.

The Cost of Using Ergonomics Software

This obviously depends on what ergonomics software you’re using, but you can expect to pay $300-600 per user per year for access to a modern, cloud-based product. For the purposes of the example calculations in the article, we’ll call it $500.

The ROI Calculation

Now that you know the estimated benefits and costs of using ergonomics software, you can calculate your expected return on investment. (Remember that Benefit – Cost / Cost = ROI)

Under Assumption #1: $12,000 – $500 / $500 = 2,300%

Under Assumption #2: $750 – $500 / $500 = 50%

As you can see, you got a positive return on your investment under both sets of assumptions.

The Case for Change

Making a change inside a large organization is difficult. You’re trying to steer a large ship with a small rudder.

You can improve your odds of successfully transitioning to the modern way of doing ergonomics by making the case for change backed by an estimated return on investment.