Average Risk Is So Passé

Blog by: Laura Agudelo, Customer Success Specialist at LifeBooster

 

What Works for One Scenario Does Not Work for All Scenarios

When organizations implement an ergonomic improvement, the goal is simple: reduce risk for as many workers as possible.

Whether it’s a new workstation, a redesigned tool, or a change in the way work is performed, every control is intended to make work safer. But designing effective controls begins long before the solution is implemented. It begins with understanding who the workforce actually is.

Too often, ergonomic decisions are based on a small sample of workers or on the “average” employee. While that approach may provide useful information, it can overlook an important reality: today’s workforce is incredibly diverse.

Workers differ in height, strength, flexibility, physical conditioning, and many other characteristics that influence how they perform the same task. If those differences aren’t considered during the assessment process, even well-designed controls may not deliver their full potential across the broader workforce.

The goal shouldn’t be to design for the average worker. It should be to design for the workforce you actually have.

 

Risk Isn’t Uniform

One of the most important lessons we’ve learned while working with customers at LifeBooster is that risk rarely looks the same across everyone performing the same job.

In one customer engagement, we analyzed workers performing identical tasks and found clear differences in shoulder risk based on worker height. Shorter workers consistently experienced higher shoulder exposure than their taller coworkers—not because they were performing the job incorrectly, but because the same workstation required them to work differently.

The work was standardized. The workers were not.

That reinforces an important principle of ergonomics: work may be designed to be consistent, but the way people experience that work is not. As workforces become more diverse, understanding how worker characteristics influence risk exposure becomes increasingly important.

 

Designing Better Controls Starts with Better Representation

Understanding that workers experience risk differently changes how we should approach ergonomic improvements.

Rather than asking, “Does this control reduce risk?”, a better question is, “Who does it reduce risk for, and by how much?”

During another LifeBooster customer project, we helped validate the effectiveness of a newly implemented ergonomic control. Looking only at the overall results, the intervention appeared successful, reducing average risk across the workforce. But when we analyzed the results by worker height, we uncovered a much richer story.

The control benefited every height group, but not equally. Shorter workers experienced substantially greater reductions in risk than taller workers. That wasn’t a sign that the intervention had failed—it was evidence that risk is not uniform, and neither is the effectiveness of the solutions we implement.

Those insights created an opportunity to ask better questions. Could the workstation be adjusted differently? Would additional equipment options benefit taller workers? Were there opportunities to fine-tune the design so that more people experienced the same level of improvement?

Those are the kinds of questions that move organizations beyond simply implementing controls and toward continuously improving them.

 

The Power of Representative Data

Answers like these are only possible when the assessment process reflects the diversity of the workforce.

Collecting data from workers with different physical characteristics and capturing meaningful metadata—such as height—allows organizations to compare how risk changes across different groups instead of relying on a single average. That broader perspective helps validate not only whether a control works, but how consistently it works across the people who use it.

It also creates confidence in decision-making.

Instead of assuming one solution fits everyone, organizations can prioritize interventions, refine equipment choices, and make targeted improvements based on evidence rather than assumptions.

 

Designing for the Workforce You Have

The future of ergonomic risk management isn’t about finding one solution that works for everyone.

It’s about designing solutions that recognize the diversity of the workforce and validating those solutions across the people who actually perform the work.

At LifeBooster, we believe representative data leads to better decisions. By understanding how different workers experience the same task, organizations can move beyond one-size-fits-all thinking and implement controls that benefit a broader range of their workforce.

Because the goal isn’t to design for the average worker. It’s to design for the workforce you actually have.

To learn how representative risk data can strengthen your ergonomics program, reach out to our team.