Office Ergonomics

This global conglomerate was sponsoring an initiative to reduce workplace injuries in their office environments. An ergonomics consultant was hired to provide workshop events on the topic. But Corporate Medical wanted to reinforce the workshops events with additional material that could be available just-in-time, with:

• Information and self-assessment tools geared to the general staff
• Additional information and resources specifically geared to managers and supervisors. These materials would be unavailable to the general staff.
• Technical references and location-based information for each plant’s on-site medical staff. These materials would be unavailable to general staff and to managers/supervisors.

Because the audience was a global one, all information and tools needed to be made available in multiple languages.

Finally, Corporate Medical needed a method to measure usage on the site, but did not want to track which individuals visited.

We partnered with Corporate Medical’s ergonomics consultant to assess the needs of each audience and identify appropriate content.

One important need was to make the general staff’s material both easy-to-read and engaging. Another important need was to ensure that the material was appropriate for plants in any location, in the US or abroad.

Our solution was an Office Ergonomics page on the client’s website, which we host. Here we placed:

• An interactive, informative, mostly-pictorial Office Ergo tutorial that helped staff learn what they needed to know in order to help themselves stay safe and healthy in the workplace
• Additional links for staff who wanted to learn more about the topic
• Self-assessment tools to help staff evaluate their own workstations, either at work or at home
• Hidden links for managers and for medical professionals, allowing access to specialized resources for each audience
• We set up a site-statistics tracker for the Office Ergo area of the site, and gave access rights to the statistics reports to Corporate Medical

All of the materials were made available in multiple languages.

Special Skills/Software

To create an easy-to-read, easy-to-localize tutorial, we kept the words to a minimum and let pictures tell most of the story.

We incorporated Flash animations to bring the pictures to life; for example, in one section we allowed the users to click on illustrations to change the postures of office workers seated at workstations.

We partnered with the client’s in-house localization service providers for translations.

We set up a “backdoor” for medical professionals and managers, which allowed them to access their job-specific materials in addition to the general staff’s materials.

Corporate Medical demonstrated its ongoing commitment to the Office Ergonomics initiative, by providing the appropriate information to staff, managers, and medical professionals. With the site-specific statistics, they were able to track site traffic and incorporate this information into their management reporting system.

Staff had access to interesting and timely information, whenever and wherever they needed it. They had the option to use the information to set up their workplace workstations, or their home workstations. And if they needed additional tools or references, it was all available at their fingertips.

Managers enjoyed using the staff materials, too. And they also had access to department-wide assessment tools and other features that would have been inappropriate for general staff usage.

Medical professionals had a good reference to local ergonomic resources, as well as a destination-site which they could recommend to staff or managers who were interested in learning more about Office Ergonomics.

For more information about this project, please contact us.