With around 10 million people working in an office environment across the UK and another 20 million subjected to all of the other potential surroundings, employees and employers will be more productive if they are healthy and understand that their working location is safe.
Where a working atmosphere becomes detrimental to the health of the workforce, business production will reduce and employers may find it more difficult to attract people to their company. Here are some ways that you can improve or maintain good health while you are at work.
Poor health stopped you from working
At any one time, the highest complaint from people working within office environments is the inability to concentrate on their work because they have too much back pain to be able to carry out their roles and responsibilities with 100% effort. Millions of days of working hours are lost because people suffer from back pain, where one of the major causes can be poor posture.
Your own company’s health and safety people will talk to you about getting your computer screen positioned correctly and that your chair height and seating posture are vitally important if you are to remain free of aches and pains due to where you sit. The keyboard and mouse positions are equally important as is the layout of all of your desktop equipment. Any failings in getting these elements correct and maintaining those positions, may be detrimental to your health.
Taking care of your water
Those back pains can also because by lifting and moving objects around your workplace that are too heavy for you, but you carry out the operation anyway. It is not always the weight of the item that is important, but the way you handle the object. Once you have learned a better way to move heavy objects, your body will not suffer with pain afterwards.
Some of the men and the stronger women may believe they can champion a cause by changing the water cooler or moving boxes of printer paper around their working location, but a trained person will carry out these handling techniques without any elements of worry.
Breathe in good air
Office environments can be extremely stressful and where the air and humidity are not good for your health, breaking point can be reached far too easily. Rules and regulations exist which govern the safety issues for both air and humidity in a working environment and these must be maintained if employees are to remain healthy and can return to work every single day of the week.
A further indication of good health can be helped considerably by people taking regular breaks so that they can stretch the muscles and not feel locked to a small environment which will cause the body to feel under pressure and perhaps not breathe freely during the course of the working hours.
A healthy business will be able to identify any of the hazards that may cause poor health to employers and employees. Once all of the risks have been evaluated, a business will be far healthier if a programme of continuous assessment is put in place within the business, because healthy employees will look forward to going to work instead of wondering when and how they can find a doctor’s appointment.
Don’t forget to do a regular assessment of the health of your office.
Chris Jenkinson writes for Ostara Systems who provide computer aided facilities management.
