Iran Occupational Health

  Background and aims: Participatory ergonomics is the concept of active participation of all components of an organization in the development and implementation of ergonomics knowledge in order to enhance the working environment, quality, productivity and safety of that organization .One of the main goals of participatory ergonomics is increasing employees' satisfaction and changing the workplace into an appropriate environment with minimal health and safety risks. This study aims to investigate the impact to implementing participatory ergonomics on the quality of workers' work life.

  Methods: This interventional descriptive and analytical study has been carried out in one of the steel making companies of Iran during 2010-2011. In this study participatory ergonomics has been implemented in several stages. Evaluating the participants' quality of work life was performed using NIOSH quality of work life questionnaire before and after the intervention. For statistical analysis SPSS 16 for Windows was used and descriptive statistics and paired t-test was performed .

  Results: Although staff's quality of work life according to their average score of questionnaires was ranked in good level either before and after implementation of the participation ergonomics, results of paired T-test analysis showed a statistically significant improvement in the quality of working conditions of workers following such intervention (P<0/001) .

  Conclusion: Enhancement in the quality of work life has a considerable effect on achieving the goal of workers' health promotion and reducing accidents, and implementation of participatory ergonomics with cooperation of industry leaders can be considered as an effective step toward achieving workers' health and satisfaction .