How Can Ergonomics at Work Prevent Injuries?
By Stella Evans
Are you familiar with this term ‘Ergonomics'?
In fact, it came into being some 150 years back. But, at present, it has become a key issue related to employee's protection. As the Greek term goes, Ergonomics means the way of adjusting or designing the workstation to make the work easier and more comfortable for the employees. Ergonomics are quite beneficial both for the employees and employers.
Ergonomics can improve the conditions in the place of work making it more appealing. On workers' side, it serves well to prevent them from hazardous effects like injuries and improves their efficiency.
How can Ergonomics protect the workers from injuries at the place of work?
This is an important issue to discuss. Have you ever imagined? Just a simple adjustment such as lowering or raising a seat, keyboard or computer screen can make a worker comfortable at large. Sometimes, changing places of furniture in an office room may show certain incredible improvements in the performance of employees. Therefore, if somebody correctly applies this theory to upgrade the working conditions, it will be a huge success.
Employee Evaluation
Let's have a look at the common reasons why employees become uncomfortable or ill due to the daily chores in their workstations. To know that, employees themselves must do a self-evaluation. Or else you can get a professional to evaluate your workstation and apply the relevant ergonomics theories to improve its condition. However, employee evaluation is more successful here, because they are the ones who face the difficulties practically. So, they know what to adjust to make the work easier for them.
Repetitive Movements
Just remember, how many times you do the same thing over and over again during your day's work. Sometimes, these repetitive movements irritate you on the go. By the time you call it a day, certain parts that tolerated these repetitive actions may give you a lot of pain. Holding the mouse for a full day may generate an acute pain in your arm and shoulder. And incessant typing may cause pain in the palms, fingers, tendons, muscles, and joints as well. Will you allow the affected parts to recover? Even if you like to relax, you may be too busy to enjoy that privilege. But, if you continuously ignore repairing these sore muscles, it may lead to a serious situation such as musculoskeletal disorders.
How can you get rid of these repetitive moves? There are ways and means to do that...
Stretch Breaks
Changing the type of work from time to time throughout the day is one thing you can do. For instance, you can take short breaks to give a rest to your fingers exhausted by typing. During that break, you can switch over to a different type of work such as filing or reading. And now you can use an efficient software to reduce your load of typing. Also, you can design your process of work systematically to cut off repetitive movements. Also, using keyboard shortcuts is a good solution to reduce the excessive motion of the mouse. And these remedial actions will speed up the work as well.
Awkward or prolonged postures
Awkward postures are occasions when you deviate too much from the normal position in performing a certain work. For instance, bending your neck or back quite extraordinarily is an awkward posture. Also, twisting legs and arms at work, reaching heights repeatedly with your tips of toes, standing in the same place for a long time and lifting weights in an unbalanced way are some other examples. This causes work weary in a short time and exert a lot of pressure and weight to the spine. And also, it decreases the efficiency at work as well. Adjusting the seats to suit the type of work, changing the tasks from time to time, maintaining a neutral posture as much as possible are some possible solutions to manage this issue. And also, when selecting furniture for your office, always buy the best stand up desks and followed by best office chairs. They prevent most of the bad postures that cause serious health problems.
Workplace Improvements
If you get a clear picture of ergonomics, you can prevent injuries and accidents and improve your business at large. First, it's advisable to have a look around and evaluate the existing working environment. Removing the unnecessary instruments that exert pressure, pain, and damages to workers are important in this task. Adjustable furniture is a good fit for a place of work. Also, suitable platforms for work, footrests should be bought since they comfort workers. In brief, the employers must take good care of the employees' protection and comfort. So, they must make use of ergonomics to uplift the working conditions. Anyway, the money, time and labor they sacrifice for that don't go waste. A comfortable, secured working environment always make the workers happy and contented. In such a situation, their efficiency and productivity are increased. And in turn, ergonomics benefits the employers by increasing the overall profit of the company.
And it's a good way to maintain a strong employer-employee relationship. Consequently, the business thrives day by day.