Why are Ergonomics Issues Now in the Headlines?

Ergonomics is making headlines like never before, and that’s a big deal for our profession. In this episode, we’re diving into why ergonomics is getting more media attention, what it means for businesses, and—most importantly—how you can leverage this to get more paying clients.

We’ll cover:

• How recent news stories highlight the growing demand for ergonomics.
• The headline effect—why businesses are finally paying attention.
• How to use these headlines (without feeling salesy) to engage potential clients.
• Practical strategies to position yourself as the go-to ergonomics expert.

Plus, I’ll share how you can join my free webinar on April 9, 2025, to dive even deeper into building a thriving ergonomics business.

👉 Register here: https://www.ergonomicshelp.com/free-ergo-workshop

Let’s make ergonomics mainstream—one assessment at a time!

Transcript

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Well, hey there. Welcome to the Business of Ergonomics podcast. Today on the show, we're tackling a question that pops up a lot. What do these headlines that we see across the internet, say about ergonomics, the implications of this and how to leverage this to bring in more customers and do more ergonomics assessments? Let's do this. Welcome to the Business of Ergonomics podcast. I'm your host, Darcy Jeremy. I'm a board certified professional agonist with over 15 years of experience delivering ergonomics programs to employers of all different types. In this podcast, I share what other healthcare professionals are already doing and being with ergonomics assessments. And how to land those clients that you dream of. Without further ado, let's jump into this episode right now. Okay, let's frame this. A decade ago, seeing an ergonomic related headline, this was very rare. In fact, I don't remember ever hearing anything related to ergonomics in a headline a decade ago. Even less further back. Like when I first started doing ergonomics assessments in like 2008, like I had never seen a headline about ergonomics. When I told family members that I wanted to do ergonomics for a career, many of them said, what is that? Can you explain what you do? It was really an interesting time. Compare that to today we're doing a podcast episode. About headlines and how to leverage them as an ergonomics professional. I think back to that time, and if I had seen just one headline about musculoskeletal disorders or ergonomics, I would've been so enthused. I was so passionate about ergonomics when I was first getting started, A previous employer said that I had to talk about ergonomics less. Excuse me. What? LLL, right? I actually think about that often, and that's probably why I'm doing what I'm doing today. Before we get into the show, I wanna tell you about a webinar that's going down Wednesday, April 9th, 2025. The details are going to be in the show notes, but you can go to ergonomics help.com/free-ergo workshop. This is all about how you can do more. Ergonomics assessments, whether you're self-employed or an employee, ergonomists everywhere. Wanna do more assessments. In this training, you're gonna learn a bunch of stuff that's gonna help you. Okay. Back to the episode. Today we are talking about headlines and what that means for our profession. You don't have to look far to see headlines like office workers at risk rise in carpal tunnel cases linked to remote work or factory injury rates skyrocket as production demands increase. These aren't isolated incidents anymore. we as ergonomics nerds, or I should say passionate ergonomics enthusiasts see these issues all the time, and that's how we get paid. So we're not surprised that they're happening. But the fact that they are being broadcasted to the general public, whereas 10 years ago this would've never happened. Today is something that deserves to be talked about more. Especially when you look in the last quarter of 2024. For some reason there were so many headlines about ergonomics related issues, concerns, and musculoskeletal disorders. Do you remember that period of time? All I saw was OSHA findings or something about warehouses and how they have higher than average injury rates and they need to be identified and rectified. I've never seen anything like it before and I think that this is really highlighting something interesting. Ergonomics obviously isn't a trend anymore. We've built our careers around this. The newspaper articles are a reflection of our growing relevance. heck ergonomics was even listed in the Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal reporting that nearly 50% of office workers experience musculoskeletal discomfort annually. I truly believe that this isn't just a random article or a hit piece about a certain company. I think this is representative of a trend towards more awareness. There needs to be a basis of awareness about ergonomics and musculo skill disorders for a huge newspaper to. Run articles around this because they need to make revenue and they're putting something out there that people care about and they wanna know about more. This is a call to action, and I'm gonna thread this into what you can do to move this forward because it's a very interesting topic with remote work, the rise in poor ergonomic setups. It's creating a perfect storm for msds, and we all know that it's not a problem. This is something for us to solve. We're talking about this general awareness that we can leverage as ergonomics professionals to do more help. More things that get us to do more ergonomic assessments, because that's what we love to do. I'm gonna call this a headline effect on businesses. So what I wanna talk about today is the headline effect on businesses and how you can combine this to what you are offering employers, whether you're doing it. As a self-employed person with your own ergonomics practice, or maybe you are within an organization and you wanna do more ergonomics assessments and put ergonomics up on almost like a pedestal where people can look to it for solutions, because sometimes ergonomics can get kinda lost in the weeds of normal business developments This can help you, first of all. I like to remember in situations like this that businesses are run by people and people consume news, things like the Wall Street Journal, and when they consume this, they're gonna be in this new state of awareness, not denial, awareness. This is going to form a wake up call, forcing them to acknowledge the prevalence of what's going on in their own organization of any sort of ergonomic issues or things related to that. Maybe there's some fear that they're being made aware of financial losses or legal issues. even employee suffering can make a perfect storm for a wake up call. Now I know that the media and the news. There's a commonality here that they're gonna be sharing more alarmist types of new stories because that gets clicks. That gets advertisers revenue, but this is where you can fit in and solve the puzzle. Here. Are you sharing wins about. The ergonomics initiatives that you have done as an outside ergonomics consultant working with other companies. Have you done this? If you're working internally in an organization talking about your ergonomics wins and the interventions that you're doing, are you measuring this stuff? If you are not measuring this stuff yet, no worries. I got your back. Check out last week's. Podcast episode, and you're gonna get all the details that you need to measure this stuff so you can plan for the future. Communication things like this are so useful as ergonomics consultants, Money or how you're able to measure increased productivity can tip the scales in your favor. Not only this, but getting testimonials from people if you're not able to access that information to win at this communication game, for instance. I wanna bring up one member of Accelerate the Business of Ergonomics, and I'm not gonna mention her name'cause I didn't get her permission, but because of one Fix that did not cost any money in an organization, she did an ergonomic assessment for this increased productivity by 10% So sharing stuff like that on your LinkedIn page, on your website when you're talking about ergonomics.'cause remember, it can take anywhere between seven to 11 touches or opportunities of communication for that to sink in to someone's person. High profile cases of companies facing legal action or reputational damage can also be powerful motivators. And this really resonates with me because in the last quarter of 2024, there was a certain company that was getting all of the news related to musculoskeletal disorders in warehouses. And they actually had to pay a really big OSHA fine, maybe not that big of a OSHA fine, but they had to pay a fine relative to not paying a fine. So this can really spur organizations forward because. They might be thinking to themselves, oh golly, gosh, the government is coming after these people. We gotta get our ducks line here. Where can we search for help? I think the value of case studies and spending a little bit of time to develop that on your own website, talking about it on LinkedIn, and developing this story so that when you're in client meetings talking with decision makers, It's really accessible to you as a person in this environment so that you can talk about best practices with ergonomics. You can talk about case studies of successful implementations that you've been a part of. What are the key indicators of success? what does an organization have to have in line for an ergonomics initiative to be successful? And even practical guides that gives them all the necessary information and resources. having this on your fingertips as an ergonomics professional is so huge. I've also seen headlines with companies who are successfully implementing ergonomics programs. That's huge. And stories about companies that have sustained long-term ergonomic improvements. This obviously can show them That ergonomics isn't just like the flavor of the month. There's like a huge long-term game involved with this and they can buy in and you can help those companies for like literally years if not more. I am really loving the idea of instead of the term marketing communicating. That's really what we're doing. Marketing is this like big term that I think does more damage or harm for us. Ergonomics professionals who wanna bring our skills forward, our businesses forward, and do more ergonomics assessments. And that's what my program is all about, accelerate the business of ergonomics. I'm giving consultants and professionals in general time saving resources. And support so that you can communicate the benefits and ROI of ergonomics and then the resources so that when you do ergonomics assessments, it takes you less time so you can do more of them and make more money. And this idea of communication rather than marketing really breaks apart the idea of. Sketchy sales tactics, used car salespeople, that type of stuff that I think keeps many ergonomics professionals back instead of stepping into where the opportunity is. Have you ever heard about the six stages of behavior change? This was a major point in any sort of organizational change, or maybe you learned about this in psychology. There's these six stages of behavior change, and this is what I really think is happening with these headlines. It's helping us do the communication that we don't have to. Spend effort doing because it's being done on this broader scale and it's moving our clients towards the part where they're actually ready to move forward with ergonomics. because for most of our clients, purchases aren't black or white. One day they're not even considering ergonomics assessments. And then the next day they're like, oh my word, let's do ergonomics and bring this ergonomics consultant in, and we're hire an internal ergonomics assessment person to do all of the work for us. It doesn't work like that. This is where the behavior change comes in, there's a real need out there to be sharing the right type of communication that gets to where our clients are, whether it's internal or external. There's the contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance, and then termination or relapse. I really think that these headlines. Are in the pre-contemplation stage of behavioral change. They're doing a lot of the work that it would take us time to educate. Pre-contemplation is that when individuals are not yet aware that there's a problem with ergonomics in their organization or the need to change and they may resist it. What I've seen over my years of doing ergonomics assessments is that if you're not working with an organization. Then they're probably in this pre-contemplation stage, so this can last forever. Unless there's something that shifts them outta that stage into the. Contemplation stage, and this stage is where individuals are aware of the problem and start considering the possibility of change, and they're weighing the pros versus the cons. So this is where maybe they're starting to reach out to you and maybe you're doing a discovery call with that client and they're not quite ready to take action with you. And then there's a preparation. Stage, and these are individuals who are actively preparing to take action and may start making small changes. Individuals are actively taking steps to change their behavior. They call you in and you start doing ergonomics assessments in an organization, or they hire you in to be the in-house ergonomics consultant for the organization then there's the maintenance. Maintenance is where individuals are working to sustain the change and prevent relapse. Maybe that's a retainer client for you, and I'm not gonna talk about the termination or relapse. So obviously there's a lot of stuff that's going on below the service of your client and you might not be aware of what. Stage that they're in, whether their contemplation or preparation, you might not know. with communication that supports the next steps to make a call to action, whatever you choose to do here, remember, you have to have patience because this takes time. It takes time for those individuals who are the decision makers to go through each of these stages and who knows whatever else they have going on in their lives and in their businesses. It can take anywhere between seven to 11. Communication points for a client to even be aware of you and your offering ergonomics, let alone consume your content related to all the wins and how amazing you are. This is true even for organizations. If you're like the in-house ergonomists, I've done both. As an in-house ergonomists, you're also dealing and working with other departments who have their own goals at the exact same time as you have these ergonomics goals. So there's not endless resources communicating these wins can get. A win-win situation going where you're supporting other departments in what they're doing in a way that's not gonna take up all their resources or time or money, whatever you do to define the term resources, we wanna be aligned and be mutually supportive. It's not this or that. The most successful ergonomics programs, support departments, and they're tied together and are really. Useful way. But even that takes time to manage and constant communication to decision makers in an organization. So there's four things that I think that you can do to fully leverage these headlines so that you can take less effort. For your communication and start bringing in clients into your world effortlessly. So the first thing you wanna do is tailor your message to hit your client at their stage of awareness. And then number two, you wanna provide relevant information. You can do this with offering the news articles that are already out there, the case studies, and the data that supports each of these stages. Then what you wanna do is build relationships, not make sales, but build relationships. You wanna be a trusted advisor and partner in their journey toward ergonomic excellence. just because they're not ready to buy from you, from today's episode and your history of doing. Psychology and other courses that you may have taken in your undergrad or your graduate degrees, that it takes time to go through this awareness to action. It takes time, but they're gonna need ergonomics help at some point in their lives because people get injured and the statistics proves it without a shadow of a doubt. Lastly, number four here I want you to showcase success stories. Start there and if you can come up with at least five success stories and talk about the emotions and the wins and who was involved and get really tight on that story. And if you don't have that, I want you to look at news examples, and I want you to do this to highlight the positive outcomes of ergonomic interventions. And if you can't do that, go to the literature, check up palmed Google Scholar, and search the success stories related to ergonomics. And you can find it there. It's not gonna take a lot of time because there's tons of success stories, but just talk about this. Bring this in, and when you're talking about ergonomics, when you're meeting with people, bring it up because although the headlines are out there and we're finally hearing ergonomics success stories and the negative consequences of not doing anything, there's still so much communication that needs to be happening about what to expect with the ergonomics. I think that there is An opportunity to educate regarding that. And a lot of the hard stuff like getting your foot in the door. I think that has been done with the newspaper headlines, which is really cool. I wanna remind you that you have the expertise and the world is finally recognizing what we're doing. How cool is that? I wanna encourage you to seize this opportunity to do more ergonomics assessments, help more people, help more businesses. So cool. And if you're doing this professionally already, you love ergonomics. You're passionate about ergonomics. I want. You two go to my webinar that I'm hosting on April the ninth, and I want you to sign it up because I'm gonna show you how to do more ergonomics assessments. All you have to do is go to ergonomics help.com/free-ergo-workshop. I'm gonna give you the details in the show notes. Till next time, can't wait to talk to you again. Hope you have a great day, and I hope you have an even better week.