The Flexible Location Work Model for knowledge workers, commonly known as ‘Hybrid’, is now ubiquitous, yielding significant benefits for employers and employees using computers for their work. The flip-side of that reality involves the rising tide of neck, back and other pain incidence in remote workers.
Your intrepid author has been reviewing a major article by EU-OSHA: “Musculoskeletal disorders and prolonged static sitting“ which was published exactly at the time when the world was just coming to terms with COVID-19, unfortunate timing in the least. Given the duration of time elapsed since the article’s publishing, where people have been working remotely for all or a percentage of their work days, the message is ever more urgent today.
Some of the very clearly written points in the highly-informative and fact-filled article include:
- Due to the use of computers and other similar devices, many workers are tied to their desks for prolonged periods of time. Prolonged sitting is an increasing occupational health risk in the workplace.
- Sedentary behaviour leads to various health risks. Besides musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs), prolonged sitting may also lead to health risks in other domains, such as diabetes, heart- and vascular disease, depression and even mortality.
- This is why it is considered important to change between postures as much as possible. For the best health and safety outcome, workers should be able to adopt a variety of body positions: preferably workers should be able to vary between sitting, standing and moving about.
- Where previously the nature of work required workers to move around in the office, e.g. to put something in a filing cabinet, now many tasks just require a mouse click. Over the past decades, a shift in the activity profile of workers has been observed with a tendency for physical activity to be replaced by cognitive work.
- Prolonged sitting is a risk factor for various health problems. The musculoskeletal health effects related to prolonged static sitting are low back pain and neck- shoulder complaints. Recent studies confirm that back pain within the last 24 hours shows a clear trend connected to static sitting behaviour.
- Sitting time at work is associated with neck–shoulder pain. An unfavourable working posture can lead to an increased muscle tension in the neck and shoulders. When neck and shoulder muscles are "overstrained", the pressure on the blood vessels will increase, meaning that the blood vessels towards the arm can become partially pinched. The result can be a painful neck, shoulder muscles and cold hands due to reduced blood flow, or a combination of these.
- Prolonged sitting is also associated with a spectrum of other health risks, including diminished cardiovascular health (including vascular function, circulation and blood pressure problems and heart disease), cancer, diabetes, weight gain, metabolic syndromes, higher risk of psychological distress, muscle degeneration, osteoporosis and a higher rate of mortality.
Beyond the main points of the article, specific mitigation guidance included:
- Avoid prolonged periods of sitting – aim to get up and take short micro breaks at least every 20 - 30 minutes.
- Always get up after 2 hours of sitting for at least 10 minutes.
- Be a work organisation and workplace culture that promotes active and dynamic ways of working.
- Provide training and instruction to create awareness, including exercises during work.
- Reinforce a correct working posture including correct workplace design and adjustment possibilities of the workplace, use the adjustment possibilities of your chair.
For the studious reader here who is interested in detailed explanations of how and why prolonged static postures lead to musculoskeletal disorders, the article is a must-read.
It’s not surprising that, with musculoskeletal disorders entrenched as the highest injury and healthcare spend for the office, employers continue working to mitigate well-understood ergonomic risks facing computer-users working on-site, remotely and in hybrid-mode.
You’ve hired terrific intelligent people as your computer-using employees. You’ve even outfitted them with the best furniture and equipment available today, however, it’s well-understood that “how an employee uses their workstation” (their behavior) will largely dictate their comfort, injury risk and productivity.
It would be ideal to hire legions of ergonomists on staff who would live with every employee at their on-site office and home-based office today. They would teach employees key actionable Best Practices of computer ergonomics and help them assess and tune-up their hybrid and at-home work area. Thereafter, they would personally coach employees to learn to automatically move about and stretch periodically while they work in neutral postures, without having to think about it.
It’s obviously cost-prohibitive to hire professionals to personally coach every employee. Instead, the most successful model, a “Do It Yourself” Model (DIY), is called for which invites employees to “share in the responsibility” of having a comfortable, safe and productive work environment through habituating well-established Best Practices.
In the case of people working on computers in on-site offices, shared-workstation offices and home-based offices, the Best Practice behaviors are (1) working in neutral postures and (2) providing brief recovery time during work coupled with movement designed to break up prolonged static postures.
That sharing of responsibility is a naturally symbiotic partnership required for employee ownership of their time working on the computer. Further, leveraging a DIY Model identifies most risk exposures early-on which can be resolved before they develop into large expensive problems.
Case Study 37 – 404,266,869 Observations
Below, we’re looking at an actual ErgoSuite Enterprise chart where we’ve chosen to utilize Least Squares Linear Regression Lines (trend lines) to reliably model extensive underlying data’s movement over time.
Most people have heard the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words“. Well, here’s “a picture worth 404,266,869 keystrokes and mousing seconds”. This is an actual ErgoSuite data chart analyzing a year’s usage of ErgoSuite’s Employee Tools by a large population of knowledge workers:
This chart summarizes a comprehensive twelve-month research project, analyzing 404,266,869 keystrokes and mousing seconds belonging to a large population of knowledge workers including a diverse spectrum of job functions.
The live chart illustrates the achievable efficacy of DIY Behavioral Office Ergonomics for reducing fatigue, increasing comfort, effecting actual behavior change.
When we properly empower employees, who can then meaningfully share in the responsibility of their comfort and safety and learn to automatically pace themselves while working in more neutral postures, then they will fatigue at a slower rate, be more comfortable, work at a lower risk profile, have fewer injuries and consume less healthcare services.
In respect of the data and outstanding results, we’ll keep the commentary brief and simply report on the details here:
- Let’s look into the chart and see what is happening through this actual data. We’re looking at an ErgoSuite Enterprise chart where we’ve chosen to view Trend Lines (Least Squares Linear Regression) which analyze actual underlying data. Used throughout data analysis and in mathematics, these lines represent the actual underlying data’s movement over time.
- Naturally, the underlying data is never as smooth as the trend lines because it ebbs and flows monthly traversing seasonality such as reduced activity during holidays, however, the trend is clear and reliable. Linear regression is an invaluable tool which is widely used for modeling trends from complex data sets.
- In this analysis, ErgoSuite is modeling actual data and not forecasting future trends. We’re specifically examining (1) Keystrokes, (2) Minutes Keying, (3) Minutes Mousing, (4) Coaching Cues from ErgoSuite and (5) Cue Compliance which is a measure of an employee’s adherence with coaching cues supporting an organizational best practice. These coaching cues are only required when an employee’s “recovery time as a function of duration and repetition” is inadequate (high risk).
- Each metric in the chart is indexed to its initial value, for comparability, showing its trend (growth) over the period. For example, seeing Cue Compliance grow from an index of 99 to 102.5 simply means its growth has been 3.5% from its initial monthly value and does not imply that compliance is above 100%.
- The average number of observations ‘per employee’ underlying each trend line is more than 192,000 over the twelve month period. The employee population spans the full spectrum of low, medium and higher computer-usage. We know we need to protect the full spectrum due to significant exposures outside of work which are at historic highs today. When employees develop new good ergonomic behaviors at work, they carry on after work when using the computer at home.
- In the chart, while output is increasing over the year, coaching cues are decreasing over the same time period. Here is solid evidence of new good ergonomic behaviors forming. Employees are not “being coached less because they are doing less”. In fact, they are producing more within a lower risk profile.
- The understanding key here is that employees learn to automatically take frequent short microbreaks while working to the extent that ErgoSuite recognizes this, thus reducing its need to provide coaching cues to meet the organizational best practice or standard.
The only way these new behaviors become sustainable is when the employee learns to change their behavior where they can automatically pace themselves, stretch and increase daily movement without having to focus on it. This is no different from how a musician benefits from the coaching of a metronome while developing their rhythm. This is the ideal time to positively reinforce neutral postures and awareness training.
When employees automate good ergonomic behaviors including working in neutral postures, providing brief recovery time during work with movement and gentle stretching and breaking up harmful prolonged periods of static postures, they’re more comfortable and work at a lower risk profile.
Other hazards such as optics, contact stress and environment issues need to periodically be addressed as identified, however, when you read every country’s regulations and laws regarding office ergonomics, you clearly see the huge prominence of the key employee behaviors – posture, pacing and movement.