After graduation, young people enter the labour market with the expectation that our
workplace will be ergonomically sophisticated and analysed to ensure that no workplace
injuries will occur during the 40 years of our working lives. Expectations are not always
realistic. It was precisely with a view to making improvements and identifying measures
that, as an occupational health and safety professional, I decided to analyse two
workplaces that were completely opposite in type. Each job analysed has its own specific
workplace. The two jobs selected represent typical characteristics of sedentary and
standing work. The typical sedentary job I have chosen is that of a professional lorry
driver, who spends most of his working time in the cab of a lorry in his working
environment. A typical standing job is a petrol station clerk, where the employee has to
be standing most of the time because of the customers and the work process. In the
introductory part of my Master's thesis, I present the general problems of standing and
sitting work from the point of view of work ergonomics. This is followed by a description
of the selected occupations, and I also mention the field of Slovenian legislation. Before
starting the main chapter of the master thesis, I put forward three hypotheses, which I
finally test. In the main chapter of the master thesis I proceed to the analysis of the selected
workplaces and the examination of both of them with the chosen OWAS method. By
observing and analysing each workplace by body segment, I determine which body
segment needs additional measures for an improved ergonomic risk assessment using the
OWAS method calculations and table. Both analysed workplaces reveal deficiencies,
which can be adequately addressed with certain measures. The good thing is that neither
workplace required immediate action, which would have meant that there was a high risk
of the employee sustaining an injury at work. The survey carried out for both workplaces
revealed the prevailing mindset among employees in terms of occupational health and
safety and work ergonomics. From the responses, it can be concluded that many
employees would like to see changes in the workplace in terms of work ergonomics. I
believe that workplace stress is one of the main reasons for workplace injuries.
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