ProErgo+ Body Mapping Workshops

It is a participatory workshop that lasts about 1 hour and includes up to 12 employees who perform the same or very similar tasks. To ensure people feel comfortable speaking openly, we recommend these sessions are for frontline employees only, rather than including direct supervisors or managers.

We use visual body maps so your team can identify exactly where they feel discomfort while performing specific tasks.

I facilitate a group discussion to dig deeper, moving beyond just ‘where it hurts’ to pinpointing ‘why it happens’. By using the group’s collective expertise, we can begin to identify root causes in your current work design.

This process helps us to start looking more deeply at the issues and consider a full range of contributing risk factors. It is a practical way to engage with your teams if you are at the start of your musculoskeletal risk management journey.

Not at all. These sessions are structured to be constructive. By using a systems thinking approach, we shift the focus from individual complaints towards identifying root causes. This collaborative process provides the evidence you need to plan practical next steps to effectively manage musculoskeletal risks.

Privacy is paramount for building trust. Even in the group sessions no private health or medical information is collected and all employees markers on the body maps are anonymous.

In the group sessions an A3 sized body map is posted on a wall. Participants are asked to use coloured markers to mark where they experience discomfort. The map is then used to facilitate further discussion.

If you prefer, there are alternatives for how employees complete the body maps that allow for more privacy:

• ‍Individual A4 body maps can be given to team members before the facilitated session. They are asked to complete them and then use a private ‘drop-box’ so the data can be collected. This information would then be transcribed onto a large body map ready for the group discussion.

• A large A3 body map can be posted in a private room for several days where team members can mark the body map in their own time. The completed map would be used in the group discussion.

Because the results are anonoymous, whichever method you select employees need to feel safe being honest without fear of their personal health data being exposed to peers or management.

You won't just get a pile of drawings. I translate the workshop findings into a visual ‘hot spot’ report. This identifies trends across your teams and provides you with a prioritised list of tasks that require further investigation, helping you work towards effective, long-term improvements.

Typically, this report will be provided to you within a week of the workshop.

The report is just the starting point. Once you have your prioritised list, ProErgo+ can support you with the further investigation phase to conduct deep-dive assessments into high-risk tasks.

The logistics are pretty simple. You will need to:

• Provide a room large enough for a group of around 12 people who do the same or very similar jobs.

• Allow employees about 1 hour to participate in the session.

• Several sessions may be needed if you have people that do different work.

I provide all the specialised materials, including body maps, markers, and the facilitation frameworks required to turn the session into actionable results.

To book your facilitated body mapping workshop, email or call us so we understand what you need and when you need it. We will check our availability and get back in touch with you.

All body mapping sessions are delivered in-person at your site. Because every business has different needs, we don’t have a ‘one size fits all’ fee.

Larger businesses may need multiple sessions to capture different work groups and we can facilitate up to four sessions in a single day.

As an example: To prepare for and facilitate a 1-hour session, and provide you with the analysed results, typically involves around 4 hours work.

There may be additional travel charges if you are more than 30km from our Rolleston base, but we will always discuss this with you beforehand. Please get in touch to discuss your specific requirements.

We include travel within a 30km radius of our base in Rolleston. For sites further afield or across the rest of the country, we will agree on travel costs and expenses with you beforehand. We want to keep things fair and transparent so there are no surprises when the invoice arrives.

While both tools use body maps to identify where employees are feeling discomfort, they serve different purposes:

• Facilitated Body Mapping Workshops: These are interactive, participatory sessions where we work directly with a group to identify where they feel discomfort and understand why. This allows employees to connect their physical symptoms directly to specific tasks, tools, or workplace layouts, fostering a collaborative approach to finding solutions.

• Digital Discomfort Surveys: These are designed to help you identify discomfort trends, severity, and frequency across a large number of employees. It is an efficient way to get a ‘snapshot’ of your organisation—whether you have a team of 5 or are managing multiple sites, our survey can capture up to 200 responses per group. Because this is a digital tool, location is not a barrier; data can be captured remotely and results can be prioritised where intervention is needed most.

Note: If you prefer a do-it-yourself option, visit the ProErgo+ store to purchase the Body Mapping Made Simple guide and build your own internal capability.

ProErgo+ is happy to travel to your site, though there will be additional travel expenses that we will discuss with you beforehand.

As an alternative to the in-person body mapping sesion, we can administer remote Digital Discomfort Surveys for up to 200 employees in different roles. We can tailor this to reflect particular job titles within your business, while keeping the data anonymous.

The discomfort survey is a more in-depth type of body map that also considers the severity and frequency of the discomfort.