Last week, I discussed how safety coordinators at an electric utility teamed up with others at the company to persuade senior management to invest $300,000 in ergonomically sound tools. While noteworthy, what the ergonomics team was able to accomplish is hardly unique. Although it's not an easy sell, if you do your homework and make an effective presentation, you can make a very strong case for an investment in ergonomic improvements.

Selling Ergonomics: Lessons to Be Learned

Here are some of the biggest lessons you can learn from the team's experience.

Partner with others in the workplace. You can build stronger proposals-not just for ergonomics but other health and safety initiatives-if you enlist the support of your fellow managers and even the workers themselves.

Conduct thorough research and present information that's specific to your workplace. The utility team spent a lot of time gathering information about the needs of its specific workplace to make its case. It's not enough to quote some generic study showing that ergonomic tools can improve workers' health and save companies money. You need to present concrete information on:

• The MSDs actually occurring in your workplace;
• The actual cost of these MSDs on the company, including medical, workers' compensation and replacement worker costs;
• Which ergonomic tools or other improvements will reduce or eliminate the MSDs;
• Other alternatives to ergonomic improvements; and
• The cost of the ergonomic improvements.

Use conservative projections of expected savings. Use conservative estimates of how the ergonomic improvements you're seeking will save the company money and when their cost will be paid back. Although it might be tempting to inflate the numbers and promised return, overselling your programs will create bloated expectations against which otherwise successful initiatives are unlikely to measure up.

Conclusion

Building the business case for ergonomic improvements isn't easy even in times of prosperity. So in these days of tightening budgets and fears of recession, the challenge is even greater. I hope the lessons from this case study will empower you to make the effort to persuade upper management of the necessity and value of such an investment.

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