Page 10 - Occupational Health & Safety, November/December 2019

RISK MANAGEMENT
ferent organizational and physical factors in the workplace.”
Sean Gallagher Ph.D., Associate Pro- fessor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Auburn University
“A recent analysis of the effects of job rotation was performed using the LiFFT risk assessment tool, developed by Auburn University. This tool is based on fatigue failure theory and its measure of estimated cumulative damage has shown strong as- sociations with low back outcomes in epi- demiological studies. The analysis looked at performing a job rotation involving a low- risk job, a medium-risk job, and a high-risk job. Results of this analysis showed that rotating workers through these three jobs (as opposed to performing each job indi- vidually) led to an overall greater risk for the three workers involved. Exposing the low- and medium-risk workers to the high- risk job greatly increased their risk, which more than offset the slightly decreased risk for the high-risk worker. Based on our analysis, the only way to reduce overall injury risk in this scenario is to use ergo- nomic design principles to lower the risk of the high-risk job.”
Jay Kapellusch, Ph.D., Associate Pro- fessor and Chair of the Department of Occupational Science & Technology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
“Our NIOSH-funded study involved data pooled from three research sites and included 2,020 workers from 35 facilities in four U.S. states. Within this diverse cohort of workers, we found that job rotation was associated with significantly higher biome- chanical exposures and between 25 per- cent and 70 percent increased likelihood of MSD prevalence. Job rotation was sig- nificantly associated with relatively worse psychosocial measures and, in particular, worse job satisfaction. These findings raise questions regarding whether job rotation, as currently practiced in workplaces, has ef- ficacy as an approach to MSD intervention.
“While commonly used as a strategy to reduce the risk of MSDs, job rotation alone is likely not effective and might be in- creasing risk in many organizations and/or complicating production planning. If used, it is advised that workers not simply rotate from one high-exposure task to another, but rather rotate to tasks with differing lev- els of exposure or at least tasks that require
different muscle groups. Each underlying task should be quantitatively assessed and controlled to ensure that the exposure from any one task is acceptable. Our study found no evidence that high exposures on one task are successfully offset by low exposures on other tasks.
“Simple approaches to injury preven- tion and intervention, such as job rotation, are unlikely to be effective in the long term. I encourage firms to pursue a continuous improvement approach, like quality con- trol, where quantitative exposure measure- ments can be used to systematically identi- fy and reduce physical exposures over time. This type of approach reduces workers’ compensation costs, lost time from WMS- Ds, and short- and long-term disability. As a bonus, the approach often encourages ac- tive participation at all levels and can lead to innovative solutions that help make the organization a great place to work even while improving the fiscal bottom line.”
W. Patrick Neumann, Ph.D., Profes- sor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at Ryerson Uni- versity (Toronto, Ontario, Canada)
“Job rotation is not a magic bullet to reduce musculoskeletal disorders. If your jobs include some with very high loading, then rotation may actually increase injury rates. Without meaningful differences in workload patterns job rotation will provide little muscular recovery for the employees. Rotation may, however, be a useful way to provide physiological variety at work and to reduce boredom. Used well, job rotation can help create a sense of teamwork as em- ployees understand a larger portion of the system and it helps set the stage for group learning and innovation efforts. If you are using job rotation to overcome poor engi- neering and weak job design, you are prob- ably just kidding yourself, and you are cer- tainly not fooling your employees.”
Thanks to these experts, the knowl- edge we need to make data-driven deci- sions based on science and research is at our fingertips. Cumulatively, they found that job rotation:
■ is not a magic-bullet solution,
■ significantly increases biomechani- cal exposures and increases the prevalence of MSDs,
■ greatly increases MSD risk for work- ers exposed to low- and medium-risk jobs who transition to high-risk jobs, and
■ increases injuries in the workplace.
The bottom line: to make decisions or embark on a process, we use our past ex- periences (beliefs) as a guide to move for- ward. But, when science and data prove otherwise, the trajectory should change; it’s smart business.
In closing, the most effective way to reduce MSDs in the workplace is to imple- ment engineering controls. They will re- duce worker exposure to forceful exertions, awkward postures, high frequencies, and vibration—that’s fact.
Blake McGowan is the CPE, Director of Re- search at VelocityEHS | Humantech.
REFERENCES
Bao SS, Kapellusch JM, Merryweather AS, Thiese MS, Garg A, Hegmann KT, and Silverstein BA. (2016). Relationships between job organisa- tional factors, biomechanical and psychosocial exposures. Ergonomics. 59(2):179-94.
Comper MLC, Dennerlein JT, Evangelista GDS, Rodrigues da Silva P, and Padula RS. (2017). Effectiveness of job rotation for preventing work-related musculoskeletal diseases: a cluster randomised controlled trial. Occup Environ Med. Aug;74(8):545-552.
Frazer MB, Norman RW, Wells RP, and Neumann PW. (2003). The effects of job rotation on the risk of reporting low back pain. Ergonomics. Jul 15;46(9):904-19.
Gallagher S, Schall MC, Sesek RF, and Huangfu R. (2017). Job Rotation as a technique for the control of MSDs: A fatigue failure perspective. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergo- nomics Society of the 61st International Annual Meeting. Austin, TX.
Gallagher S, Schall MC, Sesek RF, and Huangfu R. (2018). Assessment of job rotation effects for lifting jobs using fatigue failure analysis. Proceedings of the 20th Congress of the Inter- national Ergonomics Association. Florence, Italy.
Jorgensen M, Davis K, Kotowski S, Aedla P, and Dunning K. (2005). Characteristics of job rota- tion in the Midwest US manufacturing sector. Ergonomics. Dec 15;48(15):1721-33.
Padula RS, Comper MLC, Sparer EH, and Denne- rlein JT. (2017). Job rotation designed to prevent musculoskeletal disorders and control risk in manufacturing industries: A systematic review. Appl Ergon. Jan;58:386-397.
Vinel A, Mehdizadeh A, Schall MC, Gallagher S, and Sesek RF. (2018). An optimization frame- work for job rotation to better assess the impact on overall risk. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society of the 62nd International Annual Meeting. Philadelphia, PA.
10 Occupational Health & Safety | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2019
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