Know Your Work – The Benefit of a Physical Demand Analysis

Successfully managing the return-to-work process requires employers to plug a gap in their knowledge. During our management careers, many of us have examined the supply chain, manufacturing process and distribution process. We think we know our business and the work that happens there.

We often don’t.

We don’t know what is required of the employees at the loading dock. We don’t know how difficult it might be to operate the high-torque impact wrench. We can only guess at the physical demands required to get the parts to the manufacturing line.

We don’t need to guess anymore.It’s a straightforward process to quantify the physical demands in the workplace. If you have a safety team in place, you can have 100 jobs analyzed in 6 months. One simple assessment that yields robust information about your workplace is Suzanne Rodgers’ Muscle Fatigue Analysis (PDF download). It is designed to be used with your safety team, TQM team, or any continuous improvement process.

Once you’ve cataloged the physical demands by body region (neck, back, arms, legs, etc.), you will have the information health care providers need to make better return-to-work decisions. At a glance, a physician can see whether or not a recovering employee would respond well in a given task. If you select the right provider, they may even modify their work restriction documentation to match the format of your physical demand analyses. Then, you can immediately see all available jobs that meet an employee’s medical restrictions. Simplicity, itself!

But don’t stop there! Almost any method for assessing physical demand will yield invaluable information for your work processes. Wherever you see high physical demand, you have an opportunity. High physical demand often indicates a mismatch between your work and your workforce, and can present opportunities for productivity gains. Yet, many of these opportunities go unnoticed, unless an injury occurs. Even then, without a physical demand analysis, an employer will not know if the job poses a hazard, or not.

It is a sound investment to analyze your work. If you need help, partner with Proof:Positive to kick off your job demand assessment. Knowing your work is money in the bank!