Workplace Ergonomics

What workplace ergonomics is

Workplace ergonomics (الأرغونوميا), also called Human Factors and known in Arabic as «الهندسة البشرية لبيئة العمل» and sometimes written «الإرجونوميا», is the design of work, its tools, its place and its schedule so that they suit the abilities and limits of the person, instead of asking the person to adapt to a design that was not built around people. The question in ergonomics is therefore not aimed at the worker: why can this person not cope? It is aimed at the work: how was it designed so that coping became hard?

The English word goes back to a Greek origin made of two words, ergon, meaning work, and nomos, meaning laws. The definition deals with the concept and with design. It does not describe a treatment and it does not diagnose anyone’s health condition.

The domains of workplace ergonomics

The International Ergonomics Association divides its field into three domains, through which a single job can be viewed from several directions:

• Physical. Body posture, the carrying of loads, the movement of the hands and how often it repeats, and the fit of the seat, the desk and the height of the screen to the body of the person using them.
• Cognitive. The attention, memory and decisions that the work requires, the clarity of screens, buttons and instructions, and the number of things the worker is asked to follow at the same time.
• Organisational. The shift schedule, rest breaks, the distribution of tasks and the way supervision is carried out, that is, what brings the arrangement of work itself closer to human capacity or further from it.

A fault in each domain is recognised by different signs. A physical fault may show as a complaint of pain that returns in one particular place, a cognitive fault may show as errors that recur at one particular step, and an organisational fault may show as fatigue linked to one particular schedule. These are signs that call for examination, and they do not establish the cause on their own.

How workplace ergonomics differs from neighbouring safety concepts

• The wider framework. Occupational health and safety is the wider framework for preventing the hazards of work. Ergonomics is a design aspect inside that framework, working to fit the work to the person.
• The method of examination. Occupational risk assessment is a method for examining the work environment, estimating what may cause harm and ordering the measures to control it. What concerns the body, effort and posture is a category of hazard that the method may cover, so ergonomics is a subject that may enter the assessment, and not a substitute for it.
• Classification of conditions. Occupational disease is a classification of health conditions that arise from work. Ergonomics deals with causes, that is, work design that may strain the body, and it does not judge a condition to be occupational or not.
• Protection from residual hazard. Personal protective equipment consists of items that protect the worker from a hazard that remains in the work. Ergonomics begins by changing the work itself, and if a hazard is not removed by the design, the equipment comes next.
• The condition of the employee. Employee wellbeing is the condition of the employee in its several aspects, and it touches ergonomics in the physical aspect, where the nature of sitting or moving comes in. Wellbeing is wider, however, and a gym membership scheme on its own does not address a tiring workstation.

How a workstation is examined

A workstation is the place where the worker performs a task, with its seat, desk, device, lighting and room to move. Its examination starts from the task and not from the furniture: what does the worker do in this place, which parts of the body are used, how many times, and in what position? The tools of the workstation are then considered according to the answer. A task of entering data throughout the shift calls for attention to the height of the screen, the seat and the position of the keyboard. A task of lifting boxes calls for attention to the height at which they are reached and to the size of the box, and the seat is not the issue.

The checks for an office workstation include the height of the screen relative to the eyes, whether the seat can be adjusted, the position of the keyboard and the mouse, the position of the feet, and the lighting and its reflection on the screen. These are items for checking and not approved measures, and their figures are adjusted to the worker’s body and task.

A hypothetical example: checking a set of workstations

Suppose a hypothetical organisation checked 12 workstations used by data entry staff against a list of 5 items: screen height, seat adjustment, keyboard position, footrest and lighting. The total number of checks is 12 × 5 = 60. The checks that did not meet their item were as follows: screen 7, seat 6, keyboard 4, footrest 3 and lighting 1. The total not met is 7 + 6 + 4 + 3 + 1 = 21 checks out of 60, which is 35%.

The result shows that the screen and the seat together account for 7 + 6 = 13 of the 21, which is 61.9% of the failures. If the organisation starts with these two items, it addresses 13 checks with two actions. The percentage shows where the failures are concentrated, but it does not show what hurts the workers. It is therefore completed by asking about their complaints, because a workstation that meets all five items may still be unsuitable for the person who works at it.

A hypothetical example: rotating tasks

Ergonomics does not necessarily mean buying new furniture, since the change may be in the work schedule. Suppose a shift of 8 hours in which a hypothetical worker performs two tasks: task A, in which the worker lifts boxes and the movement repeats, and task B, which is done seated. If the worker spends the whole shift on task A, the worker is exposed to it for 8 hours. If the worker rotates with a colleague every two hours, the shift is divided into 8 ÷ 2 = 4 periods, and each of the two performs task A in two of them, which is 2 × 2 = 4 hours, half the time. The difference in hours in this example is arithmetical, and the example does not set a safe duration or a harmful one, which is for whoever assesses the task with the tools of that field. The point is that the arrangement of work itself became a tool that changes what the body bears.

How an organisation involves its workers

A worker knows from the workstation what others may not see, so the worker is asked before anything is changed. A change is tried on one workstation or one team before it is rolled out, and the people concerned are asked after a period about its effect. It may turn out that what was introduced did not help, or that it solved one problem and created another, such as an adjustable seat whose user was not shown how to adjust it. The worker is therefore taught what the design allows, and otherwise nothing changes.

Complaints are recorded by place, task and team, and not by name alone, so that their pattern appears. If complaints gather around one particular task, the task is what should be examined, and not the people who perform it.

Who owns workplace ergonomics inside the organisation

The health and safety officer collects observations and checks workstations where such an officer exists. Line management owns the adjustment of how work is arranged, procurement and facilities own the supply of tools and furniture, and human resources links the complaints that appear to the other indicators that are monitored. If responsibility stays spread out with no name on it, the checking is left without anyone to carry it through.

One indicator that may draw attention to a problem is presenteeism, meaning that an employee attends while unable to do the work as it should be done, and pain or fatigue at the workstation may have played a part in that. This link is not certain, so indicators are examined together and each is not explained on its own. Workload management belongs in the same discussion, because an accumulated schedule may strain a worker even when the workstation is suitable.

The effect of heat and the environment

Ergonomics overlaps with environmental conditions: heat, lighting, noise and ventilation. Heat, for example, changes the body’s ability to perform the same task. Heat stress is the load on the body when heat exceeds its ability to shed it. The engineering view helps here: a heavy task scheduled in the coolest hours of the day may change the load on the body without changing the effort required of it.

Work outside the organisation’s premises

Some work moves to another place, such as the home or a client’s site, and the same questions remain: what is the task, with what device, seat and desk is it performed, and for how long? But the organisation does not see that workstation as it sees its own at the premises. It may limit itself to giving the worker written guidance on adjusting the seat and the screen and on arranging rest breaks, and it may ask the worker a few questions with photographs about the workstation. Whether the organisation equips that workstation, assigns it to the worker or shares its cost is a question the organisation answers in its written policy, and the definition does not settle it. For the arrangement in which an employee works part of the time away from the premises, see hybrid work.

It is hard for an organisation to observe a workstation it does not visit, so it depends on what the worker reports. Reporting is therefore made easy, and the worker is asked to describe the task before describing the pain, because the task is what can be changed.

How workplace ergonomics is misunderstood

• Reducing it to the chair. A comfortable seat is part of the workstation, while the schedule, the task and the lighting may stay as they are.
• Blaming the worker. The claim is that the worker does not sit correctly, when the seat may not allow it.
• One solution for everyone. Bodies and tasks differ, and a design that suits one worker may not suit another.
• Stopping at purchase. New equipment needs training in its use and monitoring of its effect.
• Waiting for a complaint. A preventive check of tasks and workstations may reveal what has not yet been complained of.

How many items are enough for a check

In the sources we reviewed, we found no reference number of items by which a workstation is checked, and no approved figures for a height or a distance that suit every body, and we do not suggest a figure of our own. The items are chosen according to the task and adjusted according to the worker, and whatever concerns the requirements of a particular organisation is put to the occupational safety specialist in it.

Ergonomics remains a way of looking at work before it is a list of equipment. The question in it is how the work was designed until it became a strain on the person who performs it, and what should be changed in the design and not in the person. What is concluded afterwards is built on observing the work itself.

This is an explanation of the concept, not legal advice.