Practice Guide for OES Desktop and RSIGuard

Transcription

1 Practice Guide for OES Desktop and RSIGuard October 2011

2 Table of Contents Section I. Using the RSIGuard Summary Using the RSIGuard Summary as an OES Administrator Using the RSIGuard Summary as an Ergonomist Section II. Using the RSIGuard Functionality Using RSIGuard for an Employee with Significant Mouse Hand Discomfort Using RSIGuard for an Employee with a Work Restriction Section III. Using the RSIGuard Aggregate Report Using the RSIGuard Aggregate Report to Monitor Program Success Using the RSIGuard Aggregate Report to Identify Groups in Need of Further Resources Using the RSIGuard Aggregate Report to Measure the Impact of a Specific Initiative Accelerating Prevention 2

3 Introduction OES Office is a data-rich system, whose primary objective for use at the administrative level is to advise the prioritization of employee injury prevention efforts given limited resources. OES Office helps decision-makers understand which employees are at highest risk, and what their highest impact issues are, so that the ergonomics program budget can be spent in a way that maximizes employee comfort, productivity and health and minimizes injuries, lost work days and associated costs. RSIGuard is a personal software application that contains several different tools for reducing employee exposure to risk factors during computer use. These include self-care tools such as BreakTimer, an intelligent tool that helps ensure that employees get sufficient rest from computer activities and shows helpful stretches during those breaks, and ForgetMeNots, which offer microbreaks and help ensure that employees are aware of work patterns by using safety reminders. RSIGuard also includes strain limiting tools such as AutoClick, KeyControl, and a work restriction manager. When used together, OES Office and RSIGuard (sometimes called OES Desktop when used with OES Office) integrate to offer an even richer set of OES reports to assist in prioritizing resources. Customers develop practices tailored to their organization as they gain experience using the software and data. This document is intended to assist your organization in their initial creation of these practices by providing suggestions based on the experience and expertise of Remedy Interactive and the Injury Prevention Council. Accelerating Prevention 3

4 I. Using the RSIGuard Summary The data made available in the OES s RSIGuard Summary provides an objective view of an employee s computer usage habits. The data collected through RSIGuard is objective data, and is therefore not manipulable in the way that subjective self-assessment data is. It is highly informative for understanding how to handle the mitigation of an employee s risks, with the goal of improving the employee s comfort at work, and decreasing their risk of developing an injury. While the features of RSIGuard can be utilized to directly impact some of the statistics in the RSIGuard Summary (explored later in this document), the summary data should be considered as a guide for prioritizing ergonomic corrections, not a set of statistics that need improvement. Except for break compliance or special employee cases, an ergonomist s goal should not necessarily be to improve the data in an employee s RSIGuard Summary. Using the RSIGuard Summary as an OES Administrator 1. On a regular basis, the OES administrator should run an employee list report of the employees in the relevant group. Those with the highest risk and discomfort levels, who have already completed at least one reassessment but remain uncomfortable and/or at-risk, can be scheduled for an in-person evaluation. 2. When running the above report, include the average daily hours that each employee spends working on the computer. Anyone who utilizes the computer for less than one hour per day and does not report discomfort can be eliminated from consideration for immediate personal attention. 3. After scheduling in-person evaluations based on the priority of the above two steps, the ergonomist can prepare for each in-person evaluation by reviewing both the employee s OES Office self-assessment data AND RSIGuard Summary data. If the ergonomist does not have access to the OES, the administrator should send this information to them ahead of time. Accelerating Prevention 4

5 Using the RSIGuard Summary as an Ergonomist In preparing for an evaluation with a specific employee, an ergonomic evaluator should use the available information on the RSIGuard Summary Page to understand if the employee s computer usage is impacting their risk of injury: for example, if the user mouses at a high rate or strain exposure (as signified by the (potential concern) and (significant potential concern) icons), or if they are not taking frequent breaks. This information can guide the ergonomist in focusing on certain higher risk areas of the body/workstation during the evaluation. The RSIGuard Summary is an incredibly rich source of data, with numerous statistics. If administrators or ergonomists find the data and statistics especially difficult to understand, or have difficulty processing all of the information, they can skim through for the areas of concern, noted by the and icons. Or, to achieve a quick high-level overview of the employee s computer usage behavior, the reader can focus on the following four statistics: 1. Break compliance 2. Keyboard usage and strain exposure 3. Mouse usage and strain exposure 4. Hours spent on computer As an example of how an ergonomist might use this information, imagine Juanita, an employee with an especially small frame. Because of her small frame, she is unable to position both her keyboard and mouse centrally, causing sideways reaching. When the ergonomist sees in Juanita s RSIGuard Summary that she has relatively high mouse usage and low break compliance, one potential recommendation could be to position the mouse more centrally. In addition, the ergonomist should suggest that Juanita take more breaks or comply better with the ones being suggested. Ergonomists should also leverage the functionality of RSIGuard during the evaluation, and show the employee how to use RSIGuard more fully to improve the employee s statistics (e.g. changing break enforcement, interruption style, or frequency/length). Accelerating Prevention 5

6 II. Using the RSIGuard Functionality As stated in the RSIGuard Summary section above, the only RSIGuard statistic that an ergonomist should always try to influence is break compliance -- as recommending that an employee just type less or not move the mouse so far would be neither practical nor realistic. The functionality available with the personal RSIGuard application can be leveraged as a powerful tool to impact key RSIGuard statistics, and enable employees to mitigate their own risks over time. An ergonomist should not endeavor to fix every RSIGuard statistic of every employee they see, as the RSIGuard tools can be complex and sometimes require a significant willingness by users to change their behavior. Instead, RSIGuard can be likened to a Swiss Army knife with a variety of tools to mitigate the risks of employees with significant discomfort or challenges. Although this document presents a few specific examples of how RSIGuard features can be leveraged to address certain special cases, there are many more scenarios where these tools can be beneficial. Your company s ergonomists should be expected to learn about the complex functionality of RSIGuard. The best way to learn about the various features of RSIGuard is to play around with them. Additionally, an excellent in-depth user manual is available online: Using RSIGuard for an Employee with Significant Mouse Hand Discomfort Many ergonomists understand that the drag and drop action is one of the riskiest tasks that can be performed on the computer. So, as an example, if an employee is experiencing significant mouse hand discomfort, and the ergonomist sees in the employee s RSIGuard Summary that she performs a high number of drag and drop tasks on a daily basis, they can show the employee how to enable the KeyControl drag-lock feature. This feature can greatly reduce the risk associated with this task while minimizing the impact on the employee s productivity. Similarly, if an employee with hand or wrist discomfort performs a high number of mouse clicks on a daily basis, the employee may benefit from using the AutoClick feature. More information about this feature is available at Accelerating Prevention 6

7 Using RSIGuard for an Employee with a Work Restriction When a doctor sets a work restriction for an employee, the employer has a legal obligation to adhere to the restriction. While general RSIGuard BreakTimer settings react to the employee s behavior over time, advanced settings can enable a more specific break regimen, to comply with work restrictions. When an employee receives a work restriction, an ergonomist should meet with that individual and program the RSIGuard settings to meet the exact demands of the restriction. Accelerating Prevention 7

8 III. Using the RSIGuard Aggregate Report Measuring the success of your program s initiatives to improve the safety of your employees is critical, and often challenging. The RSIGuard Aggregate Report enables yet another measure of success and program improvement. Furthermore, by enabling the comparison of RSIGuard statistics among various groups of employees, the program manager can make high level decisions about resource allocation. Using the RSIGuard Aggregate Report to Monitor Program Success Statistics such as compliance with breaks can now be included when setting program metrics. If a program manager sets an expected departmental metric of, for example, 80% compliance with breaks, the utilization of the RSIGuard Aggregate Report would allow her to monitor which departments are meeting the metric, and which are falling short. Using the RSIGuard Aggregate Report to Identify Groups in Need of Further Resources Imagine that seven of your organization s call centers have recently rolled out a new piece of software that can be mouse-intensive if improperly used. By running an RSIGuard Aggregate Report comparing the organization s seven call centers, the ergonomics department can identify which centers have a significantly elevated level of mouse strain exposure. They can then provide further training to the employees of that call center, to ensure that they utilize the software correctly and safely. Using the RSIGuard Aggregate Report to Measure the Impact of a Specific Initiative Building upon the above call center example, after the ergonomics department has conducted the training for improved use of the new software, they can then measure the effectiveness of that training by running an RSIGuard Aggregate Report for that location. They will hope to see that the mouse strain exposure has decreased if not, perhaps they will adjust the content of their training, or consider suggesting that the employees at that center configure an RSIGuard feature to avoid such heavy mouse usage. Accelerating Prevention 8