Cost Justification for Implementing Ergonomics Intervention - Fundamentals and Assessment Tools for Occupational Ergonomics - page 55

recruitment and worker quality and morale but these will not include the social or personal disruptive
effects on the concerned workers. An argument on the basis of social justice may be needed.
4.2.4.3 Occupational Diseases
Due to the long lag time between exposure and the development of occupational diseases such as asbes-
tosis, silicosis and hearing loss, it can be difficult to prove that a particular employer was responsible
and the cost of this illness is borne by the individual and the society. From the enterprise's perspective,
if workers are at risk of occupational disease in 15 or 20 years time, the enterprise may not include an
allowance for the costs of future treatment in the current costs of production. Compared with the
potential short-term gains, the long-term risks may seem too far off to worry about. This has two
effects:
. It is more difficult to argue in support of expenditure to prevent exposure to the hazardous
substance within the workplace
. The costs of diseases that occur will be borne by the worker, their family and social services, that is,
the whole community
These long-term projects need a different model and are the most difficult to cost as they need to consider
the impact of factors outside the enterprise including changes in interest rates. For information about
long-run projects see Oxenburgh et al. (2004).
4.2.5 What Are the Benefits of Enterprise-Based Cost-Benefit Analysis?
Used judiciously cost-benefit analysis can be a powerful tool to present one's argument for funding any
ergonomics project. Cost-benefit analysis enables benefits of an ergonomics intervention for that enter-
prise to be quantified, presenting the value of the intervention to the decision makers of the enterprise.
Cost-benefit analysis also provides a logical framework to assess the impact of an ergonomics interven-
tion across all aspects of the enterprise.
4.3 Cost-Benefit Analysis
4.3.1 Cost-Benefit Analysis as a Checklist
Most ergonomists will be familiar with checklists to assist in determining work tasks, work organization
or work stations that may lead to injury; a cost-benefit analysis model can act as a generic checklist and,
in addition, identify economic parameters with which the ergonomist will be less familiar.
One essential feature of any checklist is the relevant questions it poses. In our experience, finding the
data is not usually too difficult; asking the relevant questions is the crux of the matter. A cost-benefit
analysis model must direct the user to the relevant questions although it allows the user to determine
the appropriateness of the individual questions. A difference between a specific ergonomics and a
cost-benefit analysis checklist is that the former is usually directed to the health and safety of the
worker and the latter to the productivity of the worker. Actually they will be measuring similar par-
ameters; a cost-benefit analysis does not replace the ergonomics checklist and subsequent intervention
but is designed to support it through a different mechanism.
4.3.2 Cost-Benefit Analysis Assumptions
A cost-benefit analysis assumes that the present work situation is not optimal and that changes (an inter-
vention) may be made to improve worker productivity and other cost factors, including injury and
absence costs. That is, the cost-benefit analysis assesses a work place at a particular point in time and
compares it with future or alternative situations, which are the test cases.