OE 2014 - International Workshop on Office Ergonomics

Despite good intentions of EHS teams, sizeable budgets and theoretically sound knowledge of ergonomists, a high percentage of ergonomics advice and initiatives fail to have long term influence on employee behaviour. Soon after the periodical safety events are over or the consulting ergonomists have departed, employees revert to harmful postures and unsafe work practices that may induce repetitive strain injuries. The reasons given for this sluggishness to change include being too busy at work to notice postural issues, to ergonomics recommendations being too impractical, boring or expensive to implement.
For companies, this means significant loss of investment made in ergonomics initiatives and also inability to manage the health and financial risks effectively. This workshop is intended to arm participants with 6 ground-breaking, creative and field-tested strategies to increase the adoption and impact of ergonomics/safety programs in office environments. Drawing from research in motivation theory, behaviour design and persuasion strategy, these strategies are designed to engage employees, influence behaviour and change habits such that short term postural issues can be managed and long term ergonomics culture can be created in organizations of any size.