Work Study and Ergonomics

Introduction

In current scenario every one working in the office is greatly dependent upon computers to perform work. Millions of people work with computers every day. Depending upon the type of job, some people perform dedicated computer work, while others do multiple tasks throughout the day. As people are diverse and ergonomics strives to fit the task to the person doing it, therefore, office ergonomics is concerned with the designing of office work place and is deliberated to help an individual for the assessment of the ergonomic design of computer workstation. Therefore office ergonomics help us to setup the job place as per the need of human comfort and provide basic tools to maintain a healthy workspace in the office. Some of the helpful tips show how to identify and correct ergonomic problems to prevent repetitive strain injury, eye strain, fatigue and discomfort.

Issues in Workstation Design

Whenever a work station or office is designed, most importantly the following issues are considered:

Body posture is the most significant aspect when considering the workstation design. Besides that, seat, job facing (working on VDT) aides, observations in maintaining the fine posture are also important. An ergonomically well-designed seat does not assure for accurate position although it provides some help to be in unbiased posture. It is up to the individual to learn and practise appropriate posture. The working posture can be analyzed using various ergonomic tools available, like RULA, which is described in the previous chapter.

Sitting posture

To identify the sitting posture, whether it is poor posture or good, one must be capable to reply a query; ‘what do you mean by good posture’? When using a computer, one may start with correct posture, but after some time change to slumping or forward bending posture. At a computer workstation, perfect posture is identified by observing the following points: