JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Participation of workers has been identified as an approach to address the hazards and manage the risks associated with work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) and stress related mental health problems (MHPs). Barriers identified in previous research include securing long-term management support to implement risk reduction measures. However, there is little evidence evaluating how a manager or decision maker’s readiness to enact such measures influences the outcomes of a participatory ergonomics program. The Stages of Change framework is thought to be an approach that can also be applied to tailoring ergonomics advice and interventions to managers’ receptiveness in a workplace setting.

Objective:

The main aim is to evaluate the impact of implementing the ‘A Participatory Hazard and Risk Management’ (APHIRM) toolkit in the Online shopping department for a sample of stores in a large supermarket chain, compared to usual risk management practice, based on measurement of changes in work groups’ physical and psychosocial risk profiles, using the rigor of an RCT.

Methods:

Each work group is considered a cluster in this quasi-RCT. This study will also evaluate the process of implementing the APHIRM toolkit for each work group and the intervention arm overall and evaluate how management’s stage of change (SoC) influences the use of the APHIRM toolkit.

Results:

Recruitment and data collection have commenced, but the data has not been viewed.

Conclusions:

This study evaluates the implementation of the APHIRM toolkit survey in a multi-site, large retail organization in Australia, and describes how the toolkit resources are used in this work environment. It includes a detailed evaluation of managers’ SoC regarding WMSD and MHP prevention, and how this may influence the process of toolkit implementation and associated outcomes. It is expected that findings from this study will provide additional insight on how to implement the toolkit in large organizations, to effectively reduce WMSD and stress-related MHP risk and inform potential additions or modifications to the content of the APHIRM toolkit to achieve this. This study is anticipated to produce valuable evidence that can be used to inform tailoring of interventions to managers’ and decision-makers’ SoC. Clinical Trial: The trial has been registered through Open Science Framework, osf.io/q9ze2. A trial registration has been completed following randomization to either control or intervention arms, and commencement of data collection. Data has not been viewed by the research team.