Posted By Kate O'Neill Hi All, need advice to the following: I am a safety advisor to a company who have approx 1800 people, and of those 600 would be call centre and 600 would be office workers, all using VDU's in office cubicles. Do i need to risk assess all office workstations as was suggested to me by a consultant recently?. Currently we train all employees in safe VDU usage and if they need additional advise they locate information on an internal internet ergonomics page (created and updated by myself). If an issue still persists i assess their workstation individually. Question: am i doing enough bearing in mind that ergonomics is based on fitting the person to the task, or is the consultant right and do i have assessments of circa 1800 people infront of me?? All advice appreciated.

Posted By Kieran J Duignan Kate You may well be taking on much more than you can handle, as the definition of ergonomics you state is the opposite of that proclaimed by The (British) Ergonomics Society and every other member organisation of the International Ergonomics Association. As they regard ergonomics as the science of 'fitting the task to the person', it is wisest to ensure that the website you refer to includes the definition accepted worldwide by professional ergonomists since 1949, rather than one you have invented. Provided you interpret ergonomics validly (the opposite to the definition you have stated in your question), and provide congruent training, I think the approach you outline can meet the legal requirements as long as add the additional precaution of providing a screening checklist, validated by a professional ergonomist, to each DSE user and operator every month. (For the sake of clarity, a 'professional ergonomist' is one who is a full member of any organisation in membership of the International Ergonomics Association.)

Posted By Sheila EJ Keogh Hi, I would suggest that you check your budget status and see if you could do one of the on-line packages that do assessment training and assessments for you, and compile "management systems" for you so you can see who has done the training, assessments etc, who has problems, how much of any type of problem has been reported etc. There are some fantastic ones on the market, but I'm probably not allowed to name them here (no I don't work for them either). Let me know if you'd like a recommendation - in my previous organisation we reviewed about 4 of them, and I reviewed a couple of them again earlier this year.

Posted By Kate O'Neill Thanks for the replies, Apologies - My invented / back to front definition should be taken as an honest error on my part, not intended to cause offence to all those ergonomists out there. Currently i think we comply here with the reasonaby practicable aspect of this issue, we ensure all employees undergo training prior to starting work and assess their workstation on request and fianally provide the information for reference on our own internal website which is updated on an ongoing basis. The H&S dept here assess the furniture before purchase to ensure compliance and practicality for the users. Self assessment is something we don't currently do but an area which we will surely explore. Mick, I would have the same concerns as you on depending on employees to take the time to fill out the questionaire carefully and correctly for themselves, management support would be required to ensure the self assessment process did not fall down between two stools so to speak. Beyond that I would be call upon a consultant/ergonomist for the more tricky cases as they would arise, (however you can imagine my horror when a consultant suggested this would probably not be adequate, I might add this was not someone working for themselves but a multinational so may have been more about revenue generating). The suggestion of a web based training module and subsequent quiz/ workstation review is something which has been sidelined in the past but due to growth in employee numbers is something i am looking into at the moment, It seems to be the way forward, however I do still feel that all emoloyees need to be shown how to adjust their chair in person, which could be done at induction. Thanks for your advice and help on this matter.

Posted By Andy Petrie Get them to assess their own workstations. Send out a questionnaire to everyone, most will come back ok and look into the ones that have highlighted a problem. Also do a few random ones to check people are doing it correct. I have used this process in a number of large organisations with significant success, I can even send you a questionnaire if you want.

Posted By Patrick Teyhan Kate, a variety of opinion, Mark is on the right track. Some advice seemed quite synical, sounds more like naughties version of "let them eat Cake". In the real world, the DSE Assessment is required as part of the individuals daily work ethic, as you say "Administrative / Call Centre" Environment. No matter what you have been told you can take this to the bank. A Risk Assessment should comprise of an employee's working day activities from the time they walk through the doors to the time they leave at the end of the day. You are to risk assess their activities during the working day, not guess at what they get up to, or have them tell you one thing when in fact they are doing another. If this is the qualatitive element to a company's Health and Safety Management system I would suggest that you rethink the whole H&S process, amend the employee's risk assessement accordingly, to reflect the fact that the employee's DSE Assessments, are a bit hit and miss. If a competent person (as required) does not conduct an assessment of an employees activities in an objective manner the assessmnet is not worth the paper it is written. Regards Patrick Teyhan P.S. Don't you think it's time we got a spell check on this page?

Posted By bigwhistle This is something I get involved with alot and you should do everyone who falls under a habitual user either yourself or by a specialist but it will work out about £100 a head. The online assessments imho are not heeded and supervisors rarely do them properly so you need to get the HSE forms and get going. I always thought Ergonomists reminded me of Brian Sewell now I know why!

Posted By Lorraine Shuker I am in a similar environemnt and have approx 450 staff who would be defined as 'users' and therefore need an assessment. I have considered self assessments and rejected the idea for reasons already outlined ~ that people will not necessarily do it thouroghly. Also I believe that the people most at risk who already have poor posture and bad habits are the ones most likely to not recognise the merit in the self assessment and dismiss it. At the moment I am doing all the assessments but this is very time consuming and taking a long time. My plan is to train managers how to do the assessment and then give them the responsibility for carrying them out, highlighting any problems that go beyond their abiity to advise to me.

Posted By Kieran J Duignan Kate There is safety wisdom associated with your 'honest error' of thinking in terms of 'matching the person to the job.' Although it's not 'ergonomics', the process you refer to involves the personality trait of 'reliability' which can be measured using personality questionnaires and other means. Applied consistently, this method of selection is v. cost-effective and would improve the proportion of employees disposed to behave safely and contribute to controlling risks to which DSE users are exposed. In case you or your HR colleagues wish to follow it up, the relevant research is referred to in 'Newsline', September 2005 pubished by SHL Ltd. and will be presented at a conference of the BPS Division of Occupational Psychology in January.

Posted By Ken Taylor It's interesting that the affected 'handful' includes you, Dave. This could be something to do with the fact that you have the knowledge to be able to relate the malady to the cause whereas others are not so informed or prepared to declare it to be the case. Self-assessment in any occupation, whilst expedient, has its disadvantages and when it comes to the crunch it's the employer's duty to assess the risks even if DSE is nowhere near the top of the scale.

Posted By J Knight Hi Folks, Lorraine has, to my mind, suggested the resolution to this. Assessments do need to be conducted by a 'competent person', but in most cases competence for DSE assessment is no big deal, so train DSE assessors (maybe get an ergonomist in if you want, but you don't need to) and get them to do the assessments. Self-assessment is fine if approached with caution, and is even better if it is guided self-assessment (get your DSE assessors to give everybody else a tool-box talk on why they are doing the assessment and what they should be looking for). Bring ergonomists/phyios in for people who won't fit into standard issue equipment (noting as you do that the CAA won a case in which they sacked somebody because he was too tall) or for people who have msds or chronic pain/fatigue conditions. There will be a cost to all this, but it will be worth it in loads of ways, John