Guide

What does an ergonomic risk assessment look at?

Posture, force, repetition and duration are assessed together; weight alone does not explain ergonomic risk.

Four variables

Ergonomic risk does not reduce to one number. How awkward the posture is, the force applied, how often the movement repeats and how long the exposure lasts are assessed together. A light load lifted five hundred times a day can be more demanding than a heavy load lifted once.

Where to look

Where the complaint appears and where the risk sits may differ. Back pain may come not from lifting but from an awkward posture held all day. The work is therefore watched step by step, at real working pace.

The worker's voice

Ergonomic risk is found fastest through the worker's own description: which movement is hard, what aches at the end of the day, after which job rest is needed. No measurement replaces this.

The fix is usually cheap

Adjusting height, moving where material sits, shortening carrying distance, rotation. Most ergonomic improvements are not expensive; what is expensive is the musculoskeletal disorder that appears years later.

In Optifora

Posture assessment and the musculoskeletal survey come together on the same person; the result is tied to the work arrangement and measured again after improvement.

  1. Watch the workObserve the task end to end at real pace.
  2. Take the four variablesRecord posture, force, repetition and duration separately.
  3. Ask the workerAsk which movement is hard and what aches.
  4. PrioritiseStart with the task affecting most people for longest.
  5. ImproveChange height, distance, equipment or rotation.
  6. Measure againReassess the same task after the improvement.

Manage this in Optifora

Optifora is not a single program but a compliance platform assembled from modules. The catalogue states which module is ready today and which is on the roadmap.

See what Optifora is