We had a ergonomic consultant come into our offices today.
He was there to evaluate our computer setups and let us know how likely we were to cripple ourselves within three years. He looked at people’s postures, measured various body lengths and limb angles, and came up with a list of recommendations for improving – there’s that magic word again – our ergonomic statures.
Interestingly, his most-cited phenomenon, from what I could overhear, was that of the computer user contorting his body to match whatever angle the items on his desk laid. That is, it was easier for most people to shift to uncomfortable positions for the sake of using their monitors, keyboard, or mice than it was to physically adjust those items.
In my case, it was moving my wireless keyboard six inches forward.
At the end of the day, the consultant listed a bunch of recommendations which ran the standard ergonomic spectrum. Now, we’re a startup which just got an office and haven’t gotten around to renovating the space, so a lot of it was pretty obvious:
- better chairs (with lumbar support and adjustable…everything)
- ergo. keyboards for those cramping their forearms to type (1)
- monitor arms to raise screens to eye-level
- keyboard trays to let typing hands rest at a natural position
To his credit though, the ergo. expert did run around and helped move desks, scavenge books (to prop up monitors), and adjust chair arms to serve as temporary solutions. The equipment list that he left us also matches up mostly with a lot of the recommendations some of the engineers have been making from either personal experience or past companies, so he wasn’t just trying to upsell some line of ergonomic hardware.
Thing is, all of us knew we had crappy postures and we also mostly knew how to fix it. Between the Goldtouch keyboards, Ergotron monitor arms, sliding keyboard trays and laptop stands, each of us had a part of the complete solution on our desks. The only reason people didn’t go the full setup (well, except for one guy, who did have existing backpain issues and required an ergonomic layout) was because they didn’t care enough.
So really, we were ultimately paying for the privilege of authority to confirm that “yes, this is how you do it”.
- I was a huge fan of those keyboards a few years ago, until I gave them up for laptop-style flat-key keyboards in the interest of speed and soft typing (↩)