Ergonomic Training - What are the Pros and Cons?

We offer Ergonomic Training to offices and workplaces in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Canberra. Our ergonomic training services are delivered onsite at your office and are performed by qualified Physiotherapists who work exclusively in the Occupational Health. Please contact us here if you have any questions about what is involved in ergonomic training. 

Ergonomic training is one of our core services, alongside ergonomic assessments. The two services are fundamentally different, in that during ergonomic assessments, we perform the assessments on your staff, whereas with ergonomic training, we educate and train members of your team to be able to perform the ergonomic assessments for your staff.

The aim of this article is to help you decide which service best suits your needs, by highlighting the pros and cons of ergonomic training. 

What are the advantages of ergonomic training?

• Ergonomic training is a great way to up-skill key OHS and HR staff members. It provides these staff members with the skills required to perform proactive ergonomic assessments on other staff members. Such proactivity is a great way to prevent workplace injuries from occurring in the first place.
• You will receive step-by-step guides that your employees can use to perform ergonomic self-checks at their workstations.
• ​By investing in training key staff members how to perform ergonomic assessments, you will end up saving money by not needing to ask consultants such as ourselves to come out to your office each time a new employee starts. 
• Ergonomic training ensures that you stay up-to-date with your OHS obligations as an organisation, and are updated on any changes to the relevant legislation. 

What are the disadvantages of ergonomic training?

There are no real disadvantages to ergonomic training. However, there is one limiting factor which you should be aware of. Even after receiving ergonomic training, your trained staff members should not attempt to perform an ergonomic assessment on an already injured employee, or an employee who has a medical certificate requesting an ergonomic assessment as part of their treatment plan. The reason for this is that by performing an ergonomic assessment, your trained staff members are holding themselves out to have the requisite skills to be able to perform that assessment. As such, they are liable for the consequences of that assessment (and the employer/organisation is subsequently vicariously liable for asking an employee to perform an ergonomic assessment on another employee). If someone is already injured, there are other factors that need to be taken into consideration when performing an ergonomic assessment. In these circumstances, the ergonomic assessment should be completed by a trained health practitioner who understands the underlying pathology. As such, we advise all of our clients to contact us for an Individual Ergonomic Assessment for employees who are already injured, instead of trying to do the assessments in-house.


​
We offer ergonomic training services in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Canberra, as well as the regional centres around these cities. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or would like a quote.