EHF Audits: State of the Art and Lessons Learned

An ergonomics/human factors (EHF) audit is a methodology for regular review of the fit between people and their working systems. Its objective is to provide proactive guidance on problems or good practices, so that actions can be taken to improve the EHF of a work system, often with an emphasis on safety. An EHF audit can be an appropriate measure of the performance of the EHF function. The objective of this paper is to review the current state of EHF audits from a variety of EHF perspectives and domains, so as to address their value and shortfalls. Audits in the literature and in EHF practice were reviewed (Drury and Dempsey 2020) by considering the audit’s objective structure and typical questions, as well as noting the balance between breadth, depth and application time. While much of that review concentrated on the data collection instrument, often a checklist or questionnaire, details of how the audit was to be used were noted. This included the sampling scheme and how results of the audit data collection were to be analyzed and presented to management and workforce. The current paper extends the review to lead to lessons learned that can be applied to future audit systems.