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Ergonomists: Job Description, Education, Skills and Duties, Earnings and Outlook

Submitted by: paula

Job Overview Ergonomist is also called human factors engineers, or human factors specialists. As the name implies, they are specialists that focus on improving and modifying human factors in a company to make the work more efficiently done and make the staff more productive. Ergonomists help businesses, academic institution as well as government agencies and other industries by studying human capabilities and strengths and  limitations in different workplaces.They use different technologies to be applied in a specific workplace to increase produtivity, promote safety, health and comfort of the employess as well as decreasing injury and illness. They do this by way of designing work methods and techniques and human centered equipment and even furniture.

Education, Knowledge and Trainings Required

As early as highschool one can prepare a career being an ergonomist by taking subjects such as Mathematics, Physical Education, Psychology and Health. For the post secondary training, courses such as engineering, health, social and biomedical degrees are preferred. Most ergonomists have a master's degree in either psychology or enginnering with a specific concentration on the human factors or ergonomics. Certifications are preferred but not required. It can be obtained from the BCPE (Board of Certification on Professinal Ergonomist) although with a title of certified professional ergonomist.

Skills and Abilitie

Skills that are needed to become an effective and successful ergonomists are business administration skills, communication skills, and science and technology skills. They must also have a real concern to the workers and the client companies as well as compassion to them so as to promote the best possible working environment that promote growth, health and safety to workers and productivity to the company.

Duties

As many say, an employees productivity is linked to his job satisfaction and the work environment.

This is the main concern of an ergonomist, to improve working conditions, increase job satisfaction so as to increase the productivity of the employee in a company. They study the physical and psychological factors that may affect these variables and suggest ways to troubleshoot and improve on these with the vision of giving both the company and the workers more of the advantages and less of the disadvantages. In line with this goal, they also deal with the organizational structures, worker's safety and health as well as satisfaction and levels of productivity. They act as consultants of the companies and different agencies bith government and private ones on many levels.They may educate workers, suggest methods and technologies that improve their work productivity as well as tools and furniture that aid in both safety and ease of performing the different tasks of  different employees.

Earnings and Job Outlook

The average salary of an ergonomist is around 44,162 U.S. dollars in a year. The range of salary starts off from 40, 230 U.S. dollars for the entry level positions to around 96,130 U.S. dollars for the well experienced ones. The job employment outlook for this relatively new field of ergonomics is expected to be good. The rate of employment is moving as fast as the average for the other industries as well.

Paula Hiz is a researcher and a human resource specialist who helps newly graduates, job applicants and post graduate professionals be aware of their job opportunities and available trainings for skills and practice upgrading.

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Word Count: 544 Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2010 Time: 5:26 PM


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