Application strategy of the Principles and Guidelines for Human Factors/Ergonomics (HFE) Design and Management of Work Systems in China / 中国职业医学

ABSTRACT

To provide in-depth information and guidance on ergonomics, the International Labour Organization (ILO) had issued a series of conventions, recommendations, and resolutions on human factors/ergonomics (HFE) and had published HFE guides and toolkits. In 2021, the ILO and the International Ergonomics Association released an international guideline on HFE entitled Principles and Guidelines for Human Factors/Ergonomics (HFE) Design and Management of Work Systems (hereinafter referred to as the HEF Guidelines), aiming to improve the occupational safety, health, and the well-being of workers from the perspective of work system sustainability. There are currently 112 national health standards in China related to HFE, of which 79 (accounting for 71%) are equivalent to relevant standards from the International Organization for Standardization. Most of the recommended standards do not meet the applicability requirements of HFE for the Chinese workforce, as they are different from the national occupational health standard system. At present, China's HFE capability cannot meet the needs of the workforce, and there is still a gap between occupational diseases related to HFE included in the Occupational Disease List of China and those compared to the ILO. In the future, China needs to pay attention to the application of the HEF Guidelines, further improve the technical services for occupational health, include diseases caused by poor ergonomics in the national occupational disease list, strengthen the HFE standard system in the national occupational health standard system, actively promote the application of action-oriented HFE tools, enhance “human-machine coordination” and “person-job matching”, and focus on physical and cognitive HFE design to promote equality in workplace and reduce the occurrence of occupational and work-related diseases.