Ergonomics of work environments and new challenges in the changing work/Ergonomia degli ambienti di lavoro e nuove sfide del lavoro che cambia

The paper analyzes the role that ergonomics and human factor can have looking at the deep global changes that are modifying lifestyles and work systems, and which bring out new needs and risks for workers health and safety . Sociodemographic phenomena linked to the increase of older workers, the entrance of the so-called digital natives and the massive presence of foreign workers, will lead increasingly in our country to a profound change of subjects, which together with the ever-increasing use of digital technologies and to agile and smart forms of collaboration, will constitute, and partially already constitute, work contexts based on relationships, systems and practices very different from the traditional ones. Ergonomics, as a discipline that studies the interactions between man and any other element of a system, in order to optimize the well-being of the subjects and the overall performance of the system, appears a useful methodology to deal with the complexity that the new working models can produce, both in relation to the management of the variability and diversity of workers, and to analyze the specificity of tasks, allowing us to set up work environments and systems that are usable, and therefore effective, efficient, accepted and satisfying.