This guide has been prepared by the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society of Australia (HFESA) to help you and your workers be comfortable, productive and safe while working from home. Human Factors and Ergonomics professionals can assist employers confirm that home-based equipment and furniture are suitable for workers and how they work from home. Maybe sitting at a desk all day doesn’t seem like an ideal situation. With a sit-stand desk, you can shift between sitting and standing with ease. Finding what makes you comfortable can greatly improve your workday. Start creating a workspace and routine that supports both productivity and wellbeing by focusing on one improvement at a time.
While many of you may not consider it an essential ergonomic recommendation, it’s important that you schedule short breaks throughout your workday. Whether you stand or sit for long periods, maintaining a neutral posture is critical as it minimizes the work for your spine, and your muscles don’t have to work much harder. Setting up an ergonomically optimized workstation at home will take some time and effort on your end. However, the returns you can expect out of this investment totally make it a worthy choice. If you’re a remote worker who doesn’t have an ergonomic at-home work set up yet, here are four essential ergonomic recommendations for you so you can make the most of your at-home working experience.
Optimise Your Lighting, Ventilation, and Noise Levels
Making a meal and staying hydrated gives you the opportunity to stand up, walk around, and let your eyes have a rest from the computer screen. For every 20 minutes spent looking at a computer screen, you should spend 20 seconds looking at something else 20 feet away. If you experience pain or discomfort in your muscles, joints, eyes, or other body parts while working from home, do not ignore it or try to work through it. Report any work-related injuries or illnesses to your employer as soon as possible and follow their procedures for workers’ compensation claims. I recommend seeking medical advice from your doctor or health professional if necessary or when the symptoms persist.
Work and Home Life Balance
The height of your desk should be between 25 and 30 inches, with the optimum height of 28.5 inches. Flexibility can also mean being open to learning new skills, using new technologies, and collaborating with different people. By being flexible, you can take advantage of the benefits of working from home, such as saving time and money, reducing stress, and enhancing your performance.
Our services are tailored to meet your workplace health and safety needs. An employer must take every precaution reasonable for the protection of the worker. For example, if you work at home and develop carpel tunnel from typing on your keyboard all day, that is a workplace injury.
Moving from workspace to workspace brings the challenge of finding a chair that’s the right height. Adjustable chairs allow you to have the proper height no matter if you’re at your desk or the kitchen table. Having general knowledge about home office ergonomics can help you design the right space for maximum efficiency.
DON’T skip lunch and make sure you stay hydrated
Similarly, choose decorations that spark creativity without creating visual clutter. Now, let’s expand on how you can create a thoughtful workspace serves as the foundation for remote work success. By being creative and using items around the house for exercise, you can be sure to keep your body moving and your mind sharp. Exercise may also help prevent repetitive strain injuries that may occur while spending countless hours at your home office work station.
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And don’t hesitate to contact your employer or health professional with any questions or concerns. Until next time, keep those work-from-home postures comfortable, and stay safe. Also, optimise your lighting, ventilation, and noise levels to create a comfortable and productive environment and take frequent breaks and change your position regularly to avoid stiffness and fatigue. The top of your screen should be at eye level or just below and approximately one arm’s length away. This helps you maintain a comfortable head and eye position and avoid strain and fatigue.
Prioritize Tasks with a Daily Plan
- Thus, WFH might have affected well-being differently during compared to before and after the pandemic, which limits the informative value of cross-sectional studies typical of the literature so far.
- Future studies on the dynamic relationship between WFH and well-being should consider including dynamic assessments of control variables as well as potential moderators and mediators.
- While many of you may not consider it an essential ergonomic recommendation, it’s important that you schedule short breaks throughout your workday.
- You can also consider joining industry-specific Slack communities or forums where remote workers exchange ideas and offer peer support.
- Setting up an ergonomically optimized workstation at home will take some time and effort on your end.
- If your hybrid or work-from-home office is not adequately addressing your unique needs, contact your employer.
I will also share additional resources and tools to help you further improve your Work-From-Home (WFH) ergonomics. When it comes to working parents compared to those without children, it’s those with kids who are much more likely to have a hybrid arrangement that involves working from home between one and three days a week. Employees without children are more likely to work full-time in the office or be 100 percent remote, without ever stepping into corporate headquarters. This global working from home ranking is very similar to the results for our 2023 survey wave (see Aksoy et al., 2023b). Before the COVID-19 pandemic, working from home (WFH) was not a completely unknown phenomenon 1, 2.
- Finding what makes you comfortable can greatly improve your workday.
- For accountability, services like Focusmate or Flow Club connect you with partners for virtual coworking sessions that recreate a shared office atmosphere.
- To help maintain boundaries, create a mental transition between work and home by taking a short walk before starting and after finishing your workday.
- A neutral spine posture keeps your spine in its natural curved shape without bending or twisting it too much.
- Moreover, the height of your desk should be such that your feet should be firmly placed on the ground.
- The survey – which collected data from more than 16,000 college and university graduates across 40 countries from November 2024 through February 2025 – also shows that WFH levels have dipped but are far from disappearing.
Our assessment started after the pandemic had already begun, which does not allow us to contrast pre- with during and post-pandemic dynamics. While our sample was representative in terms of gender and region, the online mode of data collection might have limited the representativeness of our sample with regard to other characteristics, such as age. Our correlational design does not allow us to draw causal conclusions about the direction of the relationship between WFH and well-being. It is plausible that WFH affects well-being, and also that well-being affects how often people work from home.
Plan as much of your day as possible the night before, so you can start your morning without wobbling between decisions. A to-do list will track your necessary tasks for the day, from submitting a report to doing your taxes to taking your kid to his dentist appointment. Google Calendar can send you reminders for important meetings, while Trello or monday.com keep you on top of long-term projects. Depending on how many screens you use, you need to ensure that your monitor is placed.
Furthermore, consider adding simple soundproofing elements like rugs or curtains to minimize distractions. Sooner or later, the coronavirus pandemic will end and we will be able to return to our familiar work situations. That way, you can avoid aches and pains that only add physical burden to an already emotionally overwhelming time. Taking a few moments to ensure that your home office is set up properly can help you reduce repetitive stress and strain while working. This can minimize pain, improve posture, and improve your overall productivity while working. On their own, laptops and tablets do not allow you to separate the keyboard from the monitor, forcing you to look down at the screen while working.
You may also miss the informal and spontaneous interactions that foster trust, creativity, and problem-solving. News, insights and events delivered to your inbox each weekday morning. Figure 4 shows WFH rates are similar for men and women across all major regions covered by our survey. We see some limited differences across regions, but the overall pattern is that men and women have similar WFH rates within countries.
When seated at the computer, your elbows should be bent between 90 and 120 work from home ergonomics degrees and your forearms should be directly in front of you. Your computer keyboard should be directly in front of you and in line with your arms and wrists. If you live in a small studio apartment, you may have to get a bit creative when setting up your home office. Find an area of your apartment that is free from clutter and is close to electrical outlets. Boston University moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected.
Working from home can mean working in isolation, which can affect your mood, motivation, and well-being. You may also face increased stress, anxiety, or depression due to uncertainty, workload, or lack of support from your managers and colleagues. We’re talking about WFH – one of the hottest acronyms to hit the scene since the onset of the COVID pandemic. We want to provide announcements, events, leadership messages and resources that are relevant to you.