Ergonomics, Training and Workplace Change: Introduction

In recent years, organizational changes and the importance of employee skill development have become major challenges facing specialists of industrial relations, management and work. Managers, particularly human resource managers, often become facilitators (Demers 1999), who are responsible for the promotion of an organizational environment conditions that enable members of their organization to make anticipated changes. Moreover, as suggested by Keller (1995), too little emphasis is placed on the reasons and conditions, other than economic motives, for recently emerging forms of employee participation. This special issue of Relations industrielles/Industrial Relations (RI/IR) explores this trend. It presents approaches and empirical research on two areas of intervention, both of considerable interest to ergonomists, but also likely to offer new perspectives for other specialists of work. The first involves training actors in work environments to use a participatory approach to the transformation of work situations. The second examines the contribution of an ergonomic-oriented occupational analysis of the design of high quality occupational training. Training is a field of practice and research involving various experts on work, particularly ergonomists (Teiger and Montreuil 1996). Since the early 1990s, an international network of researchers and ergonomists has explored the theme of ergonomics and training, presenting their findings at the triennial International Ergonomics Association conference (2000, 1997, 1994, Quéinnec and Daniellou 1991). This is a testimony to the importance and persistence of the topic. This work is the basis of this special issue. Readers who are less familiar with ergonomics may wish to consult a previous special issue of RI/IR (Vol. 50, No. 4) entitled “Ergonomics and Industrial Relations.” In particular, it contains an article written by Lamonde and Montreuil (1995), in which they explain the basics of ergonomics and its relationship to industrial relations. Ergonomic training of workplace actors generally refers to a context in which ergonomists deliver training to individuals representing various services (e.g., production, engineering, maintenance) and levels (e.g., workers, production supervisors, project leaders) in response to a request made on behalf of an organization or a group of workers. This training is often given as a response to a request to address occupational health and safety problems, but sooner or later it encompasses both quantity and quality aspects of productivity. The goal of such training is to provide workplace actors with the necessary tools to characterize all parameters that define the work situation, recognize their effects on both individual work activity and production outcomes, as well as to identify changes that will improve the situation. Once training is complete, these individuals can apply this know-how and experience to other transformation projects or existing representation structures. This training can generally be characterized in the following way: Such an approach falls within the general context of participatory ergonomics (Noro and Imada 1991) and two research interventions of this nature are presented in this issue (Bellemare et al. and St-Vincent et al.). Bellemare, Montreuil, Marier, Prévost and Allard present a participatory ergonomics intervention that depicts the necessary context for action-oriented training: the plant mobilization phases, actor training and the transformation of work situations are clearly identified. On the basis of qualitative analysis of data gathered over an 18-month period, the authors present their assessment of the process and outcome of ergonomics training delivered to actors in the hot metal production industry. The actors developed the ability to identify factors that facilitate change or transformation. This training was intended for the transformation of work situations involving individual acquisition of a number of analytical tools and it proposed changes based on the participants’ knowledge. An article by St-Vincent, Lortie and Chicoine provides an overview of the methods …