Essential Ergonomic Assessments

By Maggie Rutkowski, OTD/S, CEAS II

For ergonomics professionals, the assessment process begins with breaking down a job task and identifying the essential functions and physical demands required to complete the task. From there, these job tasks need to be screened for current or potential risk factors. Once these two components are identified, an appropriate assessment tool is selected to quantify the risk so employers can see the level of hazard to inform prioritization of appropriate solutions. There are various ergonomics assessments readily available that provide an ergonomist with insight, but how do we choose the appropriate assessment?

Within the approach, there are several ways to go about choosing an assessment. This blog will identify common ergonomic assessment tools based on observation of awkward postures, manual handling processes, and repetitive tasks.

Posture Based Assessments:

Awkward posture is an ergonomic risk factor that is concerned with positions of the body that are away from the neutral, including far-reaching, bending of body parts, neck bending or twisting, and bending at the waist.

The Rapid Entire Body Assessment (REBA) is one of the most common assessments utilized within ergonomics. The REBA assesses entire body posture for risks of work-related musculoskeletal disorders. It is a tool that looks at the essential functions and their posture factors to score each body region and then populates a final score indicating whether the task is no risk, low risk, medium risk, high risk, or extremely high risk to complete. This assessment is typically used to assess industrial or service employees. The Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA) is another common assessment. Developed by the same people who created the REBA, the RULA is used to assess the posture of the neck and upper limbs for work-related musculoskeletal disorders. The RULA looks at the essential job functions and physical tasks to assess the positions of the body parts based on their relation to neutral posture to score each body region. A final score of either acceptable posture and further investigation: change may be needed or change soon and investigate and implement change will be identified. This assessment is typically used to assess sedentary or seated tasks in addition to office workers.

Manual Handling Assessments:

Manual Handling tasks, or activities that involve lifting, lowering, pushing, pulling, or carrying, can have multiple risk factors including awkward postures, repetitive motion, force, and contact pressure. Assessments based on manual handling tasks include components that allow the ergonomist to quantify risks based on individual human factors and the load that is being lifted or lowered.

The NIOSH Lifting Equation is a common tool used to assess manual material handling risks that are associated with lifting and lowering job tasks. This tool provides ergonomists with an insight into Recommended Weight Limit (RWL) to determine if a load is too heavy and Lifting Index (LI) which provides information to estimate the musculoskeletal risk and physical strain the lift may cause.

Liberty Mutual Manual Materials Handling is a calculator tool used to provide male and female population percentages capable of performing manual material handling tasks without perceived overexertion. Not only can this be used for lifting and lowering but for pushing, pulling, and carrying as well. This tool is typically used to support ergonomic intervention and design in the workplace.

Repetitive Tasks:

Repetitive motion is a common risk factor among work-related job tasks. A repetitive motion is any task that includes repeated movements of the same body part over an extended period of time.

Assessment of Repetitive Tasks (ART) Tool is an assessment that assesses repetitive tasks regarding the upper limbs and related potential musculoskeletal disorders. It consists of a task description form and follows an assessment guide to complete and considers frequency and repetition of movements, force, awkward postures, and additional factors to determine risk.

The Moore-Garg Strain Index is used to assess job tasks for the risk of work-related musculoskeletal disorders of the upper extremities. A strain index is calculated by taking a job task and rating six risk factors relating to repetition which are: intensity of exertion, duration of exertion, efforts per minute, posture, speed of work, and duration of task (number of hours/day). From there an index score of safe, uncertain, some risk, and hazardous can be identified.

While this is just a short list of assessments that can be used to identify and quantify work-related risk factors, it is important to know that the assessment component is only one piece of the ergonomics process. It is up to the employer and employee to work with professionals to develop and implement changes to make the workplace more efficient and safer. It is never too late or too early to bring ergonomics into the workplace. For more information on ergonomics assessments, consultation, education, and intervention visit www.risingworkplace.com or call us at 828-214-5045.