Ergonomics Program Roles & Responsibilities: Who Does What (HR, Managers, EHS, and Employees)

• Intake: the first signal that a person, team, or workstation needs review. This can come from self-reporting, a manager referral, routine screening, or a scheduled check-in.
• Assessment: the structured review of the workstation, work pattern, symptoms or discomfort report, and existing equipment or habits.
• Recommendation: the specific change being suggested, such as monitor height changes, keyboard placement, work routine adjustments, training, or product options.
• Follow-up: the check after a recommendation is made to confirm what was implemented, what is still blocked, and whether another step is needed.
• Reporting: the program-level summary that helps HR, managers, and program owners see patterns instead of one-off anecdotes.
• RACI: a responsibility assignment matrix that separates who is responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed for each workflow step.

• Without clear intake ownership, employees hesitate to report early and managers guess where issues should go.
• Without clear assessment ownership, reports sit in a queue or get handled inconsistently across teams.
• Without clear recommendation ownership, workstation changes compete with everyone’s regular work and quietly lose.
• Without clear follow-up ownership, leadership sees activity counts but not whether anything improved.
• Without clear reporting ownership, the same trends reappear each quarter and still manage to surprise everyone.

A simple RACI for the most common ergonomics workflows

HR responsibilities: governance, communication, scheduling, and privacy basics

Manager responsibilities: expectations, time protection, and local accountability

EHS or occupational health responsibilities: risk review, escalation, and trend interpretation

Employee responsibilities: complete the process, try the changes, and report barriers early

Set a realistic cadence: weekly, monthly, and quarterly

Common role-mismatch scenarios and how to fix them

The key point to carry forward

An ergonomics program works better when each role knows the plain version of the job.

• HR owns governance, communication, scheduling support, and the rules of the process.
• Managers own participation expectations, local time protection, and removal of day-to-day blockers.
• EHS or occupational health owns technical review, escalation logic, and trend interpretation.
• Employees own honest participation, trying recommendations, and reporting barriers early.
• Leadership reviews should stay light but regular so reporting turns into action, not just archive material in a nicer font.

That is the short answer. If your current program feels inconsistent, do not start by adding more reminders or another dashboard. Start by naming who does what, when they do it, and how the next person in the chain will know the handoff happened.