NOTE: This document is provided for historical purposes only.
Sheree Gibson from RESOURCES
MR. ALEXANDER: Our next presenter will be Sheree Gibson, from AIHA and also an ergonomics consultant, and she will be talking about resources.
MS. GIBSON: Good afternoon. I'm really encouraged to see all these people out there -- at least you pale glimmers of people. I assume you're either diehard ergonomics fans or your flights have been canceled, one or the other.
We had a really good session yesterday on Resources, which was subtitled: Where to Go for Help. Even if most of you missed it by going to Suzanne's session on Worksite Analysis. That was where the rest of us would have been if we hadn't been giving a session, too.
Our first speaker was George Gruetzmacher, who's an ergonomist with the Wisconsin Consultation Program. George described the joint federal-state consultation program, which is a little-known secret. It's a program which is available virtually in all 50 states. It's geared towards small business, but is available in limited degrees to everyone.
The consultants that the Wisconsin program have help companies get started in ergonomics by providing assistance in solving problems. The great thing about it is, it's free. Not many times you hear that, other than this conference. The only restriction is that before you call them, you'd better decide you're going to do something, because you have to fix the problem if you're going to get them involved.
The second speaker was Leslie Nichols, who is program director for the Great Lakes Center for Occupational and Environmental Safety and Health. Leslie described another great resource: the regional Educational Resource Centers and the work that they do. The ERCs -- there was a display on one of them outside -- primarily provide training services as well as some research and other services; but probably the thing they're most known for is several excellent ergonomic short courses. If you aren't familiar with the ERC in your area, you need to find out about them. NIOSH has a list of all of them. Every area of the country is covered by them, so everybody has access.
Our next speaker was Angie Waldorf, who is the Assistant Deputy Commissioner for Occupational Safety and Health of the North Carolina Department of Labor. She's also the chair of the North Carolina Ergonomics Resource Center (another ERC) and their advisory board.
You may have heard Jim McCauley of Perdue talk about their ERC, the Ergonomics Resource Center yesterday in their summary. What they were talking about is the carrot-and-stick approach that North Carolina has taken. Instead of relying solely on citations to get people to implement ergonomics, what they're doing is also giving them something, not quite for nothing but a little bit of assistance in terms of ergonomics and where to get started. They've assembled a cadre of consultants in the North Carolina area to give people ergonomic assistance in the form of training, analysis, solution development, as well as having access to a state-of-the-art ergonomic laboratory, an extensive library, and a place to try the latest ergonomic products, kind of play around with them.
This service is provided on a fee basis for their client companies. Before all of you go out and check out your Department of Labor, I should warn that North Carolina is unique in this; this is the first ergonomics resource center in the country as far as I know, and they've won several awards.
To illustrate the success of the center, Angie brought along Walter Burlington, the H.R. Manager for Rocco Quality Foods, a poultry processing plant. Now if you're not familiar with poultry, this is a real ergonomic challenge. And these people have decided to get proactive; and before they were cited, they came along and developed, in conjunction with the ergonomics resource center, an ergonomic program or process.
After working with the center for two years, he showed us their injury statistics; and literally, they've plummeted, exponentially.
I was the final speaker. I was describing guidelines which could be used when selecting a consultant. No, I didn't say "call me," although it was tempting. First what I would advise you to do, if you haven't been the last two days, is take advantage of networking opportunities like this. This is a great way to talk to ergonomists, to talk to different people about the ergonomists that they have used.
There are a lot of other opportunities: AIHA, ASSE, the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, all have consultant listings and they can get you started in terms of consultants that may be in your area. Also, when you have a short list of consultants compiled, the thing to do is do a little bit of homework. Set up a visit for them at your plant, or at least a protracted phone call to determine if you're going to be interested in hiring them.
Explain your goals for the project and the resources you can allocate to it. You have to think about this ahead of time. Ask them their academic backgrounds, their certifications, their experience. You're interested in all this.
This is a big decision for most people. Check their references; call those people that they say are former clients and see if they were happy. At this point, ask them for a proposal and then finally pick somebody that you feel comfortable with, because that's really one of the most important things; the right chemistry between your company and the consultant. Your choice of the right ergonomics consultant can make a tremendous difference to your efforts. He or she can be an asset to your safety and health team, even if what they're providing is just a little bit of ongoing service with training or other small problems when you get in something that technically is over your head. A lot of teams work very well with a consultant on a very intermittent basis. They don't have one on staff.
Now as Dave Alexander said, I'm chair of the Ergonomics Committee for the American Industrial Hygiene Association. Finally, I want to thank NIOSH and OSHA. We at AIHA were very happy to cosponsor this event; we've been very pleased, and I hope all of you have as well. Thanks.
MR. ALEXANDER: Thank you very much, Sheree. And again our thanks to AIHA for their support in this area.
