Dr. Patrick Neumann

Work shouldn’t hurt. So says Patrick Neumann, who designs effective work systems on both the human and technical sides. That means creating systems that deliver successful business outcomes while also sustaining human health. It also means viewing workplace pain and injury as an engineering problem with an engineering solution. 

An ergonomist and scientist, Neumann believes that workplaces should invest in excellent design because the direct cost of injury, illness and death is astronomical – estimated at about $3 trillion worldwide – with serious trickle-down effects. “Businesses can invest up front in excellent design or pay far more down the road in human health, quality issues, reworking poor systems and starting over again,” he says.

To help businesses (and people) avoid these pains, Neumann is developing predictive tools that reveal the cascading consequences of workplace design to both engineers and business managers. “Effective design includes protection from harm. And that requires more humanized engineering processes.”