ASSOCIATES (vol. 1, no. 1, July 1994) - associates.ucr.edu
REPETITIVE MOTION INJURIES TEAM AND CORNELL UNIVERSITY by Barbara Taylor Copy Cataloger Cornell University Total Quality Management has moved into the area of injury prevention at the Central Technical Services division of the Cornell University Library. It is an experiment in employee empowerment in an area of keen interest to employees. Employees have been allowed to form a team and given a certain amount of power to attempt to encourage and educate fellow workers in injury prevention. For Cornell library employees, repetitive motion injury (RMI) has become an all too common occurrence. The incidence of RMI in the library system has risen from 1.97 per 100 employees in 1991, to 7.41 per 100 employees in 1993. This increase in the number of injuries caught the attention of Christian Boissonnas, Director of Central Technical Services (CTS). He asked for CTS employees to volunteer to form a team to develop a strategy for increasing awareness of RMI and the various preventative measures that can be taken to avoid these injuries. The Repetitive Motion Injuries Team was thus organized and began meeting in December 1993. The membership consists of five representatives from the various CTS units (i.e., acquisitions, gifts and exchange, documents, searching/fastcat, and cataloging) and the Director of Human Resources for the Library who attends team meetings in an advisory capacity. The Director/Consultant of the Organizational Development Services in the University Human Resource Services was instrumental in introducing the team approach to problem solving and in facilitating the team's smooth functioning in its initial phase. The team approach to dealing with identified problems is relatively new. Team members from various levels of staff represent their peers in an effort to solve problems which are common to, or have the potential to effect, all staff. This approach has broken down barriers to communication and dispelled stereotypes, and has resulted in a productive and effective joint effort which has produced several important accomplishments in the first few months of meetings. Most importantly, the team developed a mission statement which reads as follows: a) Develop a strategy for increasing CTS employee awareness and implementation of healthy work habits which would focus on reducing the number of computer-related injuries. b) Establish a continuing education program in the area of job related injuries. After these initial steps were taken, the team began the task of self-education. Each person on the team gathered and studied related materials, including the most current postings on two computer listservs. From this exercise grew a lending library which is open to CTS employees. It contains items of interest concerning repetitive motion injuries and other work-related health issues. The team is adding to the collection constantly and welcomes contributions from anyone in the library system. The team's next project was to compile a training module to advise new library employees of the potential risk of computer- related injuries. It contains letters from Christian Boissonnas and the RMI team, the philosophy of RMI prevention, and exercises to perform at the terminal. This packet will be made available to all units including current CTS employees upon request. In March, the team distributed a survey to CTS staff. It was designed by the team to examine current behaviors and attitudes toward the working environment. One outstanding result of the survey showed that 49% of the staff who responded experience or have experienced some kind of pain while working at a computer for one hour or more. In the months that the team has been working together, the individual team members' talents have been developed. For example, the team has one member who does writing while another, with a knowledge of various computer programs, illustrates through graphs and charts the team's findings. A third team member is excellent at consulting with fellow employees about their particular work-related injury problems. As the team continues to work together, even more ideas will be generated by the gathering of additional information and from brainstorming creative ways of organizing work and adapting work habits that would prevent injury. The team has moved to the forefront of employee empowerment by identifying and solving problems in the workplace.