Participatory ergonomics and organizational change

This study was done in the winding department of a synthetic fiber sector of a chemical plant. The department employed about 340 workers in three permanent shifts. The work consisted of winding fiber on a bobbin. Each bobbin is a vertical machine: the fiber to be wound is placed in a holder near the floor and the thread passes through especial mechanisms going up to the position where the cone will be produced. Each operator has a different number of bobbins to control depending on the diameter of the fiber to be wound. Employee participation in an ergonomics intervention is always effective. This participation can range from very low (asking operators about their opinions on one or various issues related to their working conditions) to a higher level, where the operators' role is much more active. In this latter case, the ergonomics intervention achieve better results (Maciel and Barreira, 1994). In this study employee participation was implemented from the very beginning. The strategy was to form a group of operators, supervisors, medical and engineering staff, and to weekly discuss issues related to ergonomics. The industry did not have a culture of employees participation, so the warmup period lasted about five months. The group received information on the industrial process, marketing conditions, maintenance work, etc. After this period, the group started to discuss possible solutions to their problems. However, as was expected, some of the main problems they had were the lack of communication inside the industry and the organizational climate. There were also a number of machine and operation problems that had to be dealt with, but the likelihood that the solutions to this later problems would be effective was related to the solution of the first one. In view of that, the group decided to try a change in the working method, implementing semi-autonomous work teams. A pilot work team was formed by 12 operators (4 of each shift) and worked during six months on an experimental basis. During this period, the frequency of health complaints, production and motivation were monitored and compared with a group of operators in the same conditions working in a traditional manner.