Cost assessment of ergonomic risk: a practical approach redesigning of workstation for hospitality industry

Abstract

The people of hotel industry are engaged in different jobs like housekeeping, cooking, catering, laundering and managing the front office etc. These are very tedious jobs, and injuries in these jobs means losses i.e. loss of money, loss of time and loss of productivity. In different sections of hotel like kitchen, laundry and housekeeping workers perform varied types of job which are very physically demanding and may cause occupational health hazards such as back pain or pain in upper extremities like upper limbs, neck and shoulders. The other aches arising from manual handling injuries are lifting, carrying heavy items or pushing and pulling the object form one place to other which ultimately affects the health of the workers and leads to occupation health hazards. Therefore study was conducted for ergonomic assessment of Hotel workers (78) working in Three Star Hotel. The study also aims to find out occupational factors influencing their heath status. Ergonomics cost of selected drudgery prone activities was calculated by measuring the physiological parameters of selected activities Postural discomfort questionnaire based on Visual Analogue Scales (VAS) was used to measure subjective qualitative judgments of different staffs regarding postures and discomfort at various times throughout the day. The average working heart rate and peak heart rate was found maximum for laundering activities followed by kitchen and housekeeping activities. Average total cardiac cost of work (beats) was found to be 1277.50 for laundering activities followed by kitchen activity was (1120.56 beats) and for housekeeping activity it was (1093.37). Similar results were also obtained for the average of physiological cost of work. It was found to be 50.73 beats/min for laundry, 48.15 beats/min for kitchen and 47.70 beats/min for the housekeeping activities as performed by the hotel workers. The awkward posture adopted by the workers at work place was the main reso of pain and discomfort in body parts. Kitchen workers reported serere pain and discomfort in legs whereas discomfort in buttock,, thighs, and mid back was comparatively low. Among the housekeeping woekres highest mean value of discomfort was reported for shoulder (4.96). The front office workers reported highest discomfort in neck (5.87), shoulder (5.12), upper back (4.5), lower back (4.5) and mid back (4.12). These kinds of pain were responsible for development of musculoskeletal disorders. The environmental factors like temperature, humidity, noise affect their working activities and also affect the physical and mental health of the worker. Moreover the activities performed by these workers were very painful to their body and hence required immediate attention to reduce the occupational health hazards. Hence a training module was developed to impart the knowledge of ergonomics for the hospitality industry workers. Impact of the same was also assessed and was found very effective.