Establishing a consistent system of record for ergonomics data makes your ergonomics process more reliable, efficient, and sustainable.

We are fortunate in the field of ergonomics to have access to a vast amount of research into the nature and causes of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs). This research has led to the development of ergonomic assessment tools that allow us to quantify MSD risk factors.

Because we’re able to quantify MSD risk factors, we can implement a systematic process to measure the initial state of risk, plan improvements that we know will reduce risk to an acceptance threshold, and then measure the post-improvement state to verify that risk was reduced according to plan.

This is the essence of a data-driven ergonomics process. While all of this data can be massively helpful, it also presents an important challenge: the data needs to be managed well!

Ergonomics data management best practices

When ergonomics data is managed well, it is:

Collected: Ergonomics data needs to be collected in a consistent and organized way. Bad data can be worse than no data at all, so data collection should be standardized to maintain a consistent data structure.

Stored: Ergonomics data needs to be stored in a centralized location so that it does not end up siloed off and therefore inaccessible to other members of the team.

Collated: Ergonomics data needs to be arranged and categorized using domain-driven design principles in order for it to be useful.

Analyzed: Ergonomics data should be presented in a form that allows for easy analysis by end users. This often includes data visualization and surfacing of important trends and pieces of data.

Distributed: Ergonomics data needs to be visible to as many stakeholders as possible, from site leaders to corporate leadership.

As you are already likely aware, maintaining these data management best practices is not easy. The size of the challenge depends on the scale of your ergonomics process, but even small-scale ergonomics programs often struggle with it.

The challenges of outdated ergonomics data management

The reason for the struggle is usually using outdated data management tools that are ill-suited to running your ergonomics process.

The most common tools we see used are paper-based tools combined with Excel spreadsheets. And this works fine… for a while. Then it becomes a cumbersome burden to manage. Things fall through the cracks, and eventually best practices fall to the wayside and you start to see a few common negative patterns emerge:

• Different methods and tools are used across team members and worksites, violating best practices around data collection.
• Data and information gets siloed in random Excel spreadsheets or paper forms, violating best practices around data storage.
• Bad data collection and storage makes it impossible to properly organize information in a consistent way, violating best practices around data collation.
• Reports are difficult to put together with data scattered all over the place, violating best practices in data analysis.
• Because you do not have a single, reliable system of record it is difficult to distribute useful data analysis to stakeholders, violating best practices in data distribution.

While it is possible to manage data well and maintain best practices with paper-based methods and Excel spreadsheets, it is very difficult and time consuming. We know because this is how we used to do it!

Fortunately, there is a better way.

The advantage of domain-specific ergonomics software

Microsoft Excel is arguably the best and most important piece of software ever created. Excel is general purpose software that allows anyone to create a database, write some logic, and create your own little software application.

You can use it for millions of use cases and customize it to your heart’s content. It was “low-code” software before low-code was a thing.

I love a good spreadsheet, but there are many limitations that come with using a general purpose tool for a specific domain where you are trying to scale a process. This is why B2B Software as a Service (SaaS) applications have exploded in recent years: it’s the great unbundling of Excel.

Using a cloud-based, ergonomics-focused SaaS product provides a dedicated workflow that is optimized around a best practice ergonomics process. By using a product like ErgoPlus Industrial, you are automatically following a best practice ergonomics process and following best practices around data management.

Inside ErgoPlus Industrial, your data is always collected, stored, collated, analyzed, and distributed with far less energy and cost than using paper-based methods and Excel spreadsheets.

It’s the smart way to manage ergonomics.

Better ergonomics data, better ergonomics decisions

The better you’re able to manage your ergonomics data, the better your ergonomics decision-making will be. The better your decision-making, the more success you will have in your ergonomics process. The more success you have, the more sustainable your ergonomics process will become.

Stay tuned for this series on sustainable ergonomics … 

Upcoming articles in this series on sustainable ergonomics are going to provide more detail and step-by-step guidance on how to implement and sustain an ergonomics process at your worksite, so stay tuned. 

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Need help? 

If you’d prefer more help than we can provide in a series of articles, we’d be happy to chat! We have over 30 years of institutional experience helping clients implement sustainable ergonomics programs. Just get in touch and we’ll schedule an introductory call to see if it makes sense to work together.