5 Tips To Improve Your Workstation Ergonomic Set Up

Osteopath Heath Williams gives us his Top 5 Tips To Improve Your Workstation Ergonomic Set Up.  As an Osteopath and Work Health and Safety Consultant, Heath works extensively with companies to address ergonomic risks in the workplace and often observes there to be many common typical issues with workers and their desk ergonomics.

Top 5 Tips

  1. When the desk is a fixed height, the first step to improving your workplace ergonomics and seated posture is to adjust the chair to the correct height.  Please see our Corporate Work Health Australia ergonomic training image below.  The forearms should be at the desk height or elbows slightly higher.
  2. Adjust the remainder of the chair.  A seat pan will often be flat or slightly tilted forward to open up the hips.  The back rest should be sitting just of 90 degrees (around 100-120 degrees) to allow for greater back support.  The lumbar support should be sitting in the small of your back.  There should be 2 fingers width gap behind the back of your knee and the front of the chair.  If your feet don’t touch the ground, a footrest should be used.
  3. The keyboard should be placed 10-26cm from the edge of the desk to allow for greater forearm support.  The keyboard should sit directly in front of the monitor when only one screen is used.  The keyboard position may sit in between 2 monitors when they are used 50% of the time each.
  4. The mouse should sit adjacent to the keyboard to avoid excessive reaching and abduction of the arm.  Where possible, place the mouse on the left side and be sure to swap the keys over.  Due to the shape and design of many keyboards, placing a mouse on the left side improves ones ergonomic posture for their forearm and shoulder.
  5. Place the screens just beyond arms length away and raise it to a height where you can view the top 1/3 of the screen when looking straight ahead.

Ergo Set Up

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clinic Locations

The Melbourne City CBD clinic is located at 29 Somerset Place (basement), close to the corner of Elizabeth St and Little Bourke in the Melbourne City CBD. Our premises adjoin the Jon Weller Personal Training Studio, a fully-equipped training space which allows clients to combine their osteopathy treatment with exercise tutorials or specific training programs and rehabilitation.

The Docklands clinic is located at 717 Bourke St (Ground Floor), beneath the Channel 9 building near the walkway from Southern Cross Train Station to Etihad Stadium. Our premises adjoin Pilates on Bourke, a fully-equipped pilates and yoga training space which allows clients to combine their osteopathy treatment with exercise tutorials, pilates or specific training programs and rehabilitation.

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