Winning Telebet Centre Design: Apply Participatory Ergonomics to Promote Work Health & Safety, Employee Wellness and Operational Efficiency
The application of ergonomics and occupational health and safety principles has a strategic significance in developing new workplaces at the Hong Kong Jockey Club (“the Club). At present, the Club has four telephone betting call (“Telebet) centres with a total of 3,900 operator workstations and employs 9,000 operators to provide 24 hours and 7 days quality betting entertainment services to customers. The Club is developing the fifth call centre with a capacity of 1,000 operator workstations and will commence operations in 2009. The project team incorporated modern architectural designs at this new centre to elevate the occupational health and safety standards so as to meet the corporate commitments towards staff wellness, customer services and operational productivity. This paper summarizes the real case experience on participatory ergonomics to develop a new Telebet call centre. Internal specialists, comprising Telebet management, occupational safety and health & ergonomics, building services, and Telebet staff representatives, an external architect and academic consultants were the key contributors to develop the overall design criteria for the new centre. In the preliminary design stage, direct observations and assessment methods were adopted to identify the key occupational safety and health, as well as ergonomics issues, interacting between the telephone operator and the task, workstation, computer accessories and overall work environment. Latest research papers and regulatory guidelines were reviewed for benchmarking. About 150 management staff and operators were also interviewed to collect user feedback on improvement needs for the existing Telebet centres. Six key areas of concern were identified: (1) operations hall design; (2) lighting and vision comfort; (3) ventilation and indoor air quality; (4) washroom and rest area facilities; (5) operator-workstation layout; (6) computer accessories and phone systems and (7) operator seating design. The outcomes were similar to the published research findings. According to the received feedback, ergonomics interventions were applied in the design, mock-up, and construction stages, focusing on advancement of the global centre design, operator workstation and operational efficiency. In the design evaluation stage, concept mock-up workstations and fully configured pre-production mock-up workstations together with the relevant environmental set up were built to evaluate: (1) Ergodesign Workstation; (2) Operator Hall and (3) Global Centre Design. Six groups of male and female employees from large, medium and small body build were invited for the evaluation on operatorworkstation fit and operators seating. Design specifications of the workstation height, workspace on desktop, height adjustability range of monitors and leg room were confirmed. Study participants were asked to evaluate the level of lighting comfort and illuminance at the workstation. Lighting fixtures and layout were assessed. A number of assessments were conducted to evaluate the acoustic features for room absorption, background noise effect and speech transmission. The benefits of progressive mockup evaluation were noted to determine the final design of the centre, fitting and fixtures for all components.
Justine, M Y, CHIM Peter, S G, NG Stephen, T C, TAI
Human Resources Manager (Employee Safety and Services), The Hong Kong Jockey Club Head of Telebet Services, The Hong Kong Jockey Club Telebet Manager (Tin Shui Wai), The Hong Kong Jockey Club
国际会议
17th World Congress on Ergonomics(第十七届国际人类工效学大会)
北京
英文
1-10
2009-08-09（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）