A method for developing organisation-wide manual handling based physical employment standards in a military context

Greg L. Carstairs, Daniel J. Ham, Robert J. Savage, Stuart A. Best, Ben Beck, Daniel C. Billing

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

15 Scopus citations

Abstract

The benefit of job-related employment standards in physically demanding occupations are well known. A number of methodological frameworks have been established to guide the development of physical employment standards for single job functions. In the case of an organisation comprised of multiple and diverse employment specialisations, such as the Australian Army, it is impractical to develop unique employment standards for each occupation. Objectives: To present an approach to organisational level physical employment standards development that seeks to retain occupationally specific task characteristics by applying a movement cluster approach. Design: Structured methodological overview. Methods: An outline of the research process used in performing job tasks analysis are presented, including the identification, quantification and characterisation, and verification of physically demanding manual handling tasks. The methodology used to filter task information collected from this job analyses to group manual handling tasks with similar characteristics (termed clusters), across a range of employment specialisations is given. Finally, we provide examples of test development based on these key manual handling clusters to develop a limited suite of tests with high content, criterion and face validity that may be implementable across a large organisation. Results: Job task analysis was performed on 57 employment specialisations, identifying 458 tasks that were grouped into 10 movement based clusters. The rationalisation of criterion tasks through clustering informed the development of a limited suite of tests with high content, criterion and face validity that may be implementable across a large organisation. Conclusion: This approach could be applied when developing physical employment standards across other multi-occupation organisations.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1162-1167
Number of pages6
JournalJournal of Science and Medicine in Sport
Volume21
Issue number11
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 2018

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2018

Funding

The authors would like to acknowledge and thank the members of the Physical Performance Team at Defence Science and Technology Group that assisted with data collection, be it leading or participating in running workshops or field observations.

FundersFunder number
Defence Science and Technology Group

    Keywords

    • Ergonomics
    • Physical demands
    • Physical test development
    • Task performance
    • Trade task analysis
    • Work

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Orthopedics and Sports Medicine
    • Physical Therapy, Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation

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