If you’ve been considering adding office ergonomic assessments to your skill set as a healthcare professional but you're waiting for the perfect time to get started, I'm here to tell you that the perfect time doesn't exist. There's no such thing as a perfect time when trying out new things. If you wait until you’re 100% ready, it will probably take you a long time before you finally take the plunge. Getting started with office ergonomic assessment can be overwhelming, but taking actionable baby steps is the key. You just need to be consistent until those actions become doable.

Doing Office Ergonomic Assessments: When Will You Be Ready?

In this blog, we're going to talk about numbers. I will share a strategy that will help you determine whether or not you’re truly ready to "go for it" with office ergonomic assessments. Read on to find out how many assessments you exactly need before you can get started and feel comfortable doing office ergonomic assessments. 

Your Actions Are Counted Into Milestones

If you're waiting for that perfect opportunity to come into your world, you're just going to end up wasting a lot of time. And of course, there's going to be an opportunity cost involved with that. Instead of waiting for perfection until you're 100% competent and confident in yourself doing office ergonomic assessments, you can try the strategy that I'll discuss below. This strategy allows you to conduct ergonomic assessments and increase your experience at the same time. And this is something that I’ve learned in my 15 years of doing office ergonomic assessments and teaching other healthcare professionals how to grow their business. In this post, I'll give you the exact quantity of numbers or action points, so that you can look at your goal and break it into smaller and more attainable pieces. 

“You can only empty the ocean one cup at a time.” This famous quote adds clarity to our process, because it does take steps to get to where we want to be. And that's why I want to bring up the idea of starting before you're 100% ready. By doing so, you'll gradually get more progress and get faster results towards your goal, whether it's having office ergonomic assessments as a part of your deliverables, or doing it as a full-time job. Whatever way you want to niche down your business, there's so much opportunity for you. However, getting that experience and on-the-job training is key to get to where you want to be.

Number of Assessments You Need

Let's talk about the number of assessments that you need before conducting office ergonomic assessments. When you're just getting started with ergonomics, it will feel like you're riding a bike. It can take time to perfect the interview questions that you’re going to ask, to take the measurements, and to determine which of your observations that you've noticed are out of alignment. The whole process is really going to feel awkward at first, but there’s certainly a process that you can do for every assessment.

In order to better understand this idea of starting before being 100% ready, I will share a counterintuitive strategy on how you can get experience doing office ergonomic assessments. This strategy is what I use with my students in my programs, and I’m going to share some details about it below: 

• 1-3 Assessments -  Your first assessment should be between 1 to 3, or 1 to 5 assessments, depending on your past experience. The first stages of your assessments are normally the most awkward of them all, that’s why I highly suggest that you try these out with your friends and family. This is where you can do an assessment usually for no cost or a greatly reduced cost. If you can do this to your friends and family, it would be a lot easier to make adjustments and figure out what works for them. Your first assessments are going to be vital because not only will it solidify your process and the questions you ask, it will allow you to be more competent and confident. The really cool thing about this is that when you've done 1 to 3 assessments on your friends and family, you can get case studies and testimonials from it. These case studies and testimonials will demonstrate that you know what you're doing, and you can use that to leverage other assessments that you're going to do in the future.
• 3-20 Assessments - This is when you're really starting to figure out the flow and improve the speed at which you're doing assessments. You're going to have a lot more experience in writing reports, and you’ll be enhancing your risk factor identification and root cause analysis skills. Those things are necessary for effective ergonomic assessments, but they certainly take time to develop. And we do need that time into this to get really skillful. As you get more comfortable conducting assessments, you can then start increasing your charges as you’ll be providing more value to your clients. 
• Over 20 Assessments -  Doing 20 assessments is the gold standard. You're going to start seeing certain trends once you do more than 20 assessments. And with over 20 assessments under your belt, you're also going to start to see the association between certain ergonomic risks, recorded symptoms, and possible solutions as soon as you meet your clients. If you can get to 20 assessments, you'll realize that things are going to be a lot smoother.

Following the metrics above can give you a really good insight into whether or not you’re ready to start doing office ergonomic assessments. This strategy makes office ergonomic assessments a lot more manageable. This is also what my students are doing in order to get faster results. Of course, it's going to be very bumpy when you're getting started, and it's not going to come easily. But after doing 5 assessments, it's going to be a little bit easier to do, and you're going to be a little bit more confident and competent when you get to 20 assessments.

And that’s it. I hope this blog inspired you to start taking action to increase your experience. And if you’re interested in taking the next steps in your career and you want to learn more details about the ergonomics industry, I have a training for you. Just click on this link and get started today.