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Welcome to Take 5 – a fact-filled segment of personnel-related information you need
to know -- presented in five minutes or less, the Personnel Cabinet has produced Take 5
to further its vision of being a trusted and valuable resource for you for innovative,
accessible and responsive human resource services.
Hi. Welcome to Take Five. I’m Pat Stipes. I am here with Donna Shelton, Director of
the Return-to-Work Program within the Personnel Cabinet. One service provided by Donna and
her staff is Ergonomic Evaluations. Donna, first tell us what Ergonomics means.
Ergonomics means simply the study of work. We try to fit the person to the job as opposed
to fitting the job to the person. We want to make sure an employee is as safe, as comfortable
and as productive throughout their work day. So, an Ergonomic Evaluation would be a review
of an employee’s workstation, is that right? That’s correct. My staff and I would visit
the employee’s workstation, we would make some suggestions if we are watching them and
observe them. The workstation could be an office setting; it could be a nursing facility,
it could be a kitchen, even a distribution center anywhere that an employee works and
then it’s amazing how small, little suggestions that we make can actually make the employee
much more comfortable throughout their workday. OK, specifically, how about a few examples
of what you’ve suggested to address these issues at workstations.
Certainly, a lot of times we’ll go into an office setting, for instance, and we will
see employees who have their keyboards up on top of their workstations. This is at an
inappropriate height for that because it shows and causes some flexion and stress to the
shoulders so what we will maybe suggest is to raise their chair or sometimes if their
chair cannot be raised high enough, we suggest a keyboard holder to bring that keyboard back
into the appropriate ergonomic standards. A lot of times, we just do a lot of education
for employees as far as the adjustability and the features of their chairs and how they
can raise their chairs or lower their chairs – just a lot of adjustability features.
Another suggestion is a lot of times when employees have papers that they use on their
workstation, there is a lot of bending, up and down and flexion of the neck so we’ll
suggest a document holder that will put that paperwork directly in front of the employee
so that will minimize the flexion of their neck.
Can any employee request an Ergonomic Evaluation? Yes, I normally suggest that the employee
go through their supervisor so that everybody’s in the know and everybody knows what’s going
on and then the supervisor can just call me at 502-564-0348, or they can e-mail me at
Donna.Shelton@ky.gov. How long does it typically take an ergonomic
evaluation to go through its process? Normally, we ask for about an hour especially
if it’s an office setting. We can go in pretty quickly and look at how the employee’s
workstation is set up and really can kinda come to conclusions as far as what suggestions
we need sometimes it may take a little longer especially if it’s in a distribution center
or a kitchen where we may need to observe the employee for several hours and watch exactly
the steps that they take. Donna, upon the completion of the ergonomic
evaluation, what’s the next step? Well, after my staff and I complete the evaluation
what we will do is come back to the office and I will write a report and provide that
to the supervisor so that they can have something tangible in their hand as far as our findings.
We try to make sure we mitigate any cost because we are mindful of the budget issues and so
we do try to come up with innovative ideas to minimize any costs that we may have to
but sometimes equipment does need to be purchased. If there were to be any items that need to
be purchased, that would be at the agency’s expense.
Thank you, Donna, for letting us know how we can get assistance in improving our productivity
at our workstations. For more information, be sure to visit the Personnel Cabinet’s
Web site, click Employee Relations and then click the Return to Work Program. This is
Pat Stipes for Take 5.