About This Course and What an Ergonomics Program Is

This course is for people who run or support an ergonomics program in a US workplace, or in a company that follows US practice: health, safety and environment (HSE) managers, ergonomics coordinators, supervisors and occupational health staff. It is at intermediate level. It assumes you already know what a hazard and a risk assessment are, and it focuses on how to manage the whole program rather than on how to assess one task.

An ergonomics program is the organized way an employer finds and fixes the job features that cause musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs): injuries and disorders of the muscles, tendons, nerves, joints and spinal discs. Ergonomics itself means fitting the job to the worker, not forcing the worker to fit the job.

Why a program, and not a one-off fix

A single good fix, such as a lift table at one packing station, helps the people at that station. A program does more. It keeps finding new problems as jobs, products and people change, it checks that fixes really work, and it treats injured workers early so that a sore wrist does not become a lost career. Most MSDs build up over weeks or months, so a system that looks for early signs is worth far more than one that waits for a lost-time case.

This course follows the elements that OSHA and NIOSH guidance describe: management leadership, worker participation, training, early reporting, job analysis, controls, medical management and evaluation. The modules take them in that order and finish with a case study that runs from the first meeting to the first annual review.