It is not easy breaking a habit, especially if you do it for most of your life. In fact, maybe one of the more difficult ones to crack is bad posture, which not only brings quite a lot of negative effects to employees, but it can also lead to economic damage to a company.
Back pain, a direct result of bad posture, accounts for more than 264 million lost workdays a year in the U.S, quite a big number, not to mention the cost of the lost revenue, which ranges from US$50 to $100 billion lost every year.
One of the main places where we slouch is at work, especially if you are someone who works at a fixed workspace, like an office. Moreover, with an increased use of technology, in mobile devices in particular, it seems that the practice is only going to continue to get worse over time.
Prolonged Sitting
Another even more harmful practice is that of prolonged sitting, which despite proven to have negative effects, many workers still end up spending more than half of their time seated. This alone can bring a plethora of very harmful effects, like premature mortality, diabetes, cancer, in addition to obesity.
A study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that reducing sitting time by 66 minutes per day using a sit-and-stand workspace device reduced the negative effects of prolonged sitting, like upper back pain and neck pain, by 54 percent.
However, it is important to note that standing alone is not healthy either, as the same institute found that prolonged standing at work is just as bad, as it can lead to back and muscle pain, not to mention physical fatigue.
It seems then, that there is no way to escape our bad posture habit at work. Not actually, since the answer to a better work posture lies primarily in a workspace design that is adaptive, with no one sitting or standing around all day. Which is why many businesses are starting to adopt ergonomically designed workspaces.
No More Slouching
Ergonomically designed workspaces are able to break most employee’s bad posture habits since most of them come with various properties that fight the subconscious urge to slouch.
Some of these properties allow changes in height, angle and positions of the desk, tables and monitors, so to fit the optimal office layout. Not only that, but these elements can also be personalized to each employee’s taste in order to create a more comfortable work environment.
These ergonomically designed workspaces feature memory settings that allow workers to set a sitting or standing height of their preference, which are able to reset to the standard height with the push of a button.
Such innovations allow for a smoother transitioning between sitting and standing, helping sustain better body positioning and permitting a more fluid movement, a key point of ergonomically designed workspaces, since it can help employees in their struggle against bad posture.
In addition to helping reduce slouching, it allows employees to change their work positions to one where the most feel comfortable, depending on their mood or energy levels on said day, all without hampering their work.
All these positive effects can be a game-changer for a company, since ergonomically designed workspaces will help cement a positive posture and mindset, which in turn will increase productivity and decrease absenteeism.
Even beyond ergonomics, they are ideal for anyone who spends most of their work time sitting and easily supports a shared environment, or for a company where a space needs to open up so to make way for a new employee since they come with adjustable desks that support multiple memory height settings.
In Conclusion
Ergonomically designed workspaces can radically change your business for the better, it will not only bring in more money in the long term, but it also promotes the well-being of employees, which is always beneficial for your company, morally and monetarily. Check out Iconic Workspaces in the Miami area and see the comfortable and ergonomically designed workspaces available for your employees.
