by Serafine Lilien | Aug 3, 2021 | ergonomic equipment, Ergonomics
Get a different perspective by having a trained professional look at your work area vs. purchasing a product…..a big picture view. This helps to bring clarity to your whole work area and helps your company save money.
Ergonomics utilizes the science of designing a job environment to fit the worker, instead of expecting the worker to fit the job. Tasks, tools, equipment, and workplace layouts are studied and optimized for a safe and efficient work environment.
When employees consistently use awkward postures or excessive force, they may be at increased risk of developing Repetitive Strain Injuries (RSI). Resulting pain and discomfort can adversely affect productivity and may cause short or long-term problems.
We approach buying services differently than we do purchasing products. It is helpful to ask ourselves: Do I think this product will solve my problems? Do I need training to use this product correctly? Maybe I need help overall? Maybe the product is not the solution? Will a service solve the problem?
People tend to resort to services as a last resort when they cannot do something on their own. How do you feel about services?
Where do Ergonomic Services come into play?
“I don’t need a professional. I can just buy this new keyboard. That will solve my problem.” Will it? How do you know the keyboard is the problem? Maybe it’s because your desk is too high. Maybe the keyboard you have is fine. You do not know. Maybe you are throwing solutions at problem you do not know how to solve because it feels faster than calling in a professional?
A properly designed work environment protects employees from injury and saves company funds in many ways.
Here is an example: If you are creating a new reception area for your organization, it is advisable to make that reception area adjustable. So many reception areas I see are “built in.” Anything that is “built in” is not adjustable in any way, shape or form and can be a poor purchasing decision. Let’s say you install your “built in” table at the reception area at 31” high. You hire a 5’ tall receptionist. She needs to type at 26”, if she is a touch typist, so her “built in” desk is 4” too high for her to work within the ergonomic guidelines for her specific neutral posture. If receptionist works in this awkward position she will be increasing her risk of a musculoskeletal issue at some point in time. So you say, just “build in” at 26” high, well what happens during breaks and the 6’ tall person come by to use that same work station or your receptionist leaves and you hire another one who will have their own specific neutral posture? You got it, it won’t “fit” them.
Ergonomic evaluations provide valuable information to each and every client I see.
See my recent blog titled: ERGONOMICS IS A WHOLE PICTURE EXPERIENCE. IT IS NOT … JUST NEW EQUIPMENT …
In it I talk about what people learn when they have an ergonomic evaluation. Here are the key takeaways:
Ergonomics looks at the whole picture.After looking at the whole picture then we can problem solve.Learning what neutral posture is.Learning to work in that position.I review their entire work area. If you have pain in your hands, how do you know your keyboard is what is causing it?
What an ergonomic assessment includes, is another person viewing what you are doing and HOW you are doing it. You cannot do that for yourself. I know I cannot. By having a trained professional look at your work area you are getting a different perspective. A big picture view. This helps to bring clarity to the whole situation!
If you are uncertain if you or your entire staff need an ergonomic evaluation Ergoarts can, upon your request, send out a discomfort survey to determine priority of issues/concerns allowing for longterm planning and budget friendly options.
If you are planning an office redesign, reach out to Ergoarts prior to ensure you get the best products that are actually usable for your employees.
Make sense? Have questions? Ready for or want more info for an ergonomic evaluation? Contact me, I am here to listen: serafine@ergoarts.net
by Serafine Lilien | Jun 30, 2021 | Ergonomics
Being an ergonomic professional, I meet and experience a wide range of people day to day. I work with a variety of people who have different workplace needs and time schedules.
Ergonomics is the science of fitting the work environment to the employee, (to prevent and resolve injuries). This way employees do not sustain injuries due to an ill-fitting workplace setup. Works stations are usually generic until we create them to fit. Similarly, to how you would want clothes or shoes to fit your body well in order to avoid short term and long term injuries, an ergonomic evaluation will provide you a well-fitting work station.
I am mainly talking about office workers in this article, but I have performed ergonomic assessments in all sorts of environments, from people building airplanes to a cook working in a kitchen. Surprisingly often, ergonomic evaluations start with the person telling me right off the bat: “I just….. need a new…. keyboard/mouse/desk”. This could be before I even tell them what I can offer or what I am planning to do to help them get set up!
These same people will tell me at the very end of the evaluation: “I have learned so much from you. Things I did not know I needed to learn!”
How and why does this happen? The above scenario has occurred to me many, many times.
First, let me explain a little of what I do and what neutral posture is, because it is an important concept and help you to better understand what it is I do.
Neutral posture is a body position that uses the least amount of stress and strains to your muscles, joints, and ligaments. Neutral positions are natural, normal positions that are easy on the body and your musculoskeletal system. These positions are easy for the body to maintain and are painless to reposition from. When your hands and wrists are in an awkward position or non-neutral position, grip strength is actually lost and you have less power to complete the task, plus your muscles work harder and fatigue easier. Performing tasks using awkward posture on a consistent basis can lead to fatigue, discomforts or even disabilities.
We can all learn to use our body in a more neutral position to keep ourselves healthy as well as to reduce or eliminate our discomforts. Using awkward positions “non-neutral” positions can fatigue our arms, hands, limbs, and joints. Maintaining a neutral posture is important because, if you respect the way your body is designed to move while performing your work, then you can minimize aches and pains.
During the ergonomic evaluation I listen to their pain and their solution scenarios. Then, I tell them what I am there to do.
I start with:
1. I will be reviewing your entire set up to find out what is causing the issue (if indeed they have an issue- preventative evaluations are always best) and this is important because helps me to determine where you are not working in a neutral position. I focus on your entire posture to help me determine why you may be hurting.
2. I will teach you about neutral posture
3. I will evaluate your work area to make sure you can work in neutral
4. Your company will often provide whatever product you may need for you to work in neutral
5. I will look at your whole setup and from that perspective, help you solve your physical issues.
At the end of the ergonomic evaluation, maybe they do need a new keyboard and maybe that will solve their problem. Or maybe their current keyboard is fine and really the height of the keyboard, either too high or too low, was the issue.
If they do need a new keyboard, then I will teach them how to use it within a neutral range so they do not continue to work in an awkward position.
It is not until I watch them work, see what postures they are currently using, and teach them how to work in neutral, that am I able to help them solve their physical issues.
Many, many times at the end of the evaluation people say to me: I have learned so much from this appointment. Thank you so much for all the valuable information you shared with me. I had no idea ergonomics was all this.
Yes, ergonomics is a whole picture experience. If you change one thing, something else will change, because our bodies are connected. With ergonomics, we need to look at the whole picture before we can offer you solutions.
For more information or to schedule an ergonomic evaluation please email me.
by Serafine Lilien | Feb 3, 2020 | Ergo Tips, Ergonomics
A study of 7,300 workers finds those who primarily stood were twice as likely as those who primarily sat to suffer from heart disease during a 12-year period.
Sandy Smith | Aug 18, 2017
“A combination of sitting, standing and moving on the job is likely to have the greatest benefits for heart health,” says Smith. “Workplaces need to apply this message not just to workers who predominantly sit, but also – in fact, especially – to workers who predominantly stand.”
“Prevention programs that focus solely on physical job activity, while ignoring other conditions such as the psychosocial work environment, are unlikely to lead to meaningful changes in cardiovascular risk,”
Smith says.
Here is a link to the study: https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/187/1/27/4081581
The Relationship Between Occupational Standing and Sitting and Incident Heart Disease Over a 12-Year Period in Ontario, Canada. Peter Smith, Huiting Ma, Richard H Glazier, Mahée Gilbert-Ouimet, Cameron Mustard. American Journal of Epidemiology, Volume 187, Issue 1, January 2018, Pages 27–33,https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwx298. Published: 11 August 2017
Here is the link to EHS article referring to the study: https://www.ehstoday.com/health/prolonged-standing-job-greater-risk-heart-disease
by Serafine Lilien | Jan 24, 2018 | ErgoArts Press, Ergonomics
This combines my love for ceramics/sculpture and ergonomics.
Check it out at this link:
https://ceramicartsnetwork.org/ceramics-monthly/ceramics-monthly-article/Clay-Culture-Create-in-Comfort-210600#
Originally published in February 2018 issue of Ceramics Monthly, pages 24-25. http://www.ceramicsmonthly.org . Copyright, The American Ceramic Society. Reprinted with permission.
by Serafine Lilien | Jan 24, 2017 | Ergonomics
My twisty- turny journey to doing the work I love involved numerous careers, multiple colleges, and both coasts.
I have been a professional ergonomist for 17 years and would love the opportunity to help you and your employees create healthy and productive habits within your work environment.
I can honestly say that not once as I child did I stand up in class and say “I want to be an ergonomist when I grow up.” In fact, drawing on my lifelong love of art, I started my career off as a medical illustrator drawing fish bones at the Museum of Natural History in NYC! It was a fun job, but despite the training and specialized nature of the work, it just didn’t pay enough.
In order to increase my salary and get steady work, I became a graphic designer. Graphic design required drawing and design work using computer based software. All this software required extensive use of the mouse (or other input device). After many years of being a graphic designer and using the mouse a lot, I developed a repetitive strain injury in my right hand. After a while, I realized I could no longer do this kind of work full time, since my hand was not getting any better. I needed to take care of my body and ensure I could support myself.
During that time, I had tried many treatments to help myself, from massage to chiropractic care, physical therapy, occupational therapy, acupuncture, medication, industrial physicians, wearing braces, using topical medications, self massage, stretching, you name it! I was experiencing so much pain in my right hand and arm that I eventually took to calling myself a massage slut, because I would ask anyone and everyone to massage my aching limb.
As they say if you cannot do, teach, so I became a graphic design instructor. I did that for a few years, until I figured out that to become a full-track, tenured faculty member I would need to have a Master’s degree in graphic design. Because this would involve me going back to doing nearly the same level of graphic design work (and using a mouse) that had caused my injury in the first place, this was not a good solution.
Hence I found myself fully immersed in an early mid-life crisis. What was I going to do for the rest of my life to earn money that would not further compromise my health? As part of my search for a solution, one summer I went to visit the career center at the local community college and met this very helpful woman who did not have much to do during the scholastic off-season. I ended up visiting her two to three times a week and she would help me evaluate various career possibilities.
Lost as I was, I did know that I wanted to spend the rest of my career helping people and doing preventative and/or therapeutic work. I considered everything from physical therapy and occupational therapy to phlebotomy (people trained to draw blood from a patient). I made lots of calls and did many informational interviews for all sorts of careers. Unfortunately, none of these turned out to be a good match, in that they would involve using my hands too much and therefore wouldn’t be a good match for my physical needs (I don’t like to use the word “limitations”).
This was before the internet-based age of Information we now live in, so perhaps it’s not surprising that it was an unassuming little piece of paper that set me on the path to what I do today. One day this wonderful councelor found this 2” x 3” flyer talking about something called The Human Factors and Ergonomic Society. Intrigued, I called them, asked a bunch of questions, and then waited patiently for the (snail) mail to arrive that contained the book of all the schools in it with Ergonomic programs around the US.
After still more phone calls and interviews, it turned out that yes, being an ergonomist was something I could physically do. Eventually, I started graduate school for Human Factors and Ergonomics at San Jose State University in San Jose, CA. I was now in the engineering building, which seemed to me a strange place for an artist to end up. One of my teachers called me a “canary in a coal mine” meaning that if I can get through the program anyone can. I wrote a 99 page thesis and I graduated in 2004 with my Master’s degree. I became a full time intern at a tech company in 2000, working and going to grad school simultaneously.
Having been a practicing ergonomist now for 17 years, I know I made a good decision. I love my job. I love helping people. I love sharing my knowledge and helping people to keep their bodies healthy and their lives productive. And I am immensely grateful (and aware of the irony in the fact) that I am now in a position to help people avoid the very type of injury that set me on a path to this career in the first place.
Because of the experiences that brought me to this work, I am in a unique position to provide empathetic and insightful assistance to your company and employees regarding the ergonomic environment at your business. I would love to help keep you and your employees healthy and productive. – Serafine Lilien, Owner, ErgoArts
by Serafine Lilien | Mar 22, 2016 | Ergonomics
One of the most frequent complaints I hear from people I am doing an ergonomics assessment for is how horrible their chair is. It’s uncomfortable, they’ve tried using a pillow, using a blanket, doing odd things with tape, and yet no matter what they try, they’re still experiencing discomfort, sometimes major discomfort such as the inability to get out of the chair without back pain. Granted, sometimes the problem is the chair, but very often the chair in question is a fully adjustable, fully functioning ergonomic chair. The problem is that the person has no idea how to use it properly.
While in many contexts using a chair “properly” is as simple as sitting down in it, the chairs we use for work, because we spend so much time in them, require a little more effort. The chair must be adjusted correctly and the employee must be sitting in the proper position (called “sitting in neutral”).
Just the other day I did an evaluation at a client site. The person I was evaluating, “Wendy,” was sitting in a cushy looking “executive style” chair where the only adjustability was height. The arm rests were fixed to the back rest and seat pan. Adjustability is key to a good ergonomic chair, because if you can adjust the chair then a wider range of people can actually “fit” into the chair. Wendy had a small pillow she was placing into the curve of the lower back in order to provide support for her lumbar area. This is the most important place for a person to have support in a chair, but this chair had no adjustable lumbar support. When Wendy stood up the pillow moved, so every time she sat down she had to remember to put the cushion back into the correct spot on her lower back. How many times a day do you think she did not put the cushion back in place? I actually have photographic evidence of her not using the pillow as a lumbar support but sitting on the pillow instead. Sitting on the pillow is not helping support her back! People get in a hurry, they have multiple tasks at hand, they cannot always remember to put the little pillow back in place. I call this solution a “band-aid” because it is temporary, not something you want to use long term.
Then Wendy told me her “other” chair was over in the corner. It turned out that this other chair was a fully adjustable ergonomic chair in excellent condition. When I asked Wendy why she wasn’t using it, as it had fully adjustable lumbar support, she replied, “Oh that chair is so uncomfortable, that chair hurt my back. I had tape all over it trying to get it to work.” I suggested we give it a try, to see if I could get it to work for her.
I made the seat pan longer, changed the angle of the seat pan to have a slight negative tilt so that there was no pressure on the back of her legs, adjusted the lumbar support to fit into the curve her back and adjusted the back rest angle to allow for the alignment of ears, shoulder, elbow and hip. Wendy then sat in this chair and the look of relief was palpable on her face. Wendy was comfortable. The chair fit! No tape needed. No pillow needed. No new chair needed.
This is why ergonomic assessments are so important. Companies can spend good money on a fine ergonomic chair and their employees have no idea how to adjust it to their body. Purchasing a good chair for employees is not even half the solution. Teaching employees how to sit in neutral and how to correctly operate and adjust their chair is incredibly important, will minimize the injuries associated with incorrect posture, and ultimately save the company money.
Wendy had not been educated in either how to sit in neutral, nor in how to adjust her chair, and she is far from the exception. Of the over 10,000 evaluations I’ve done, perhaps 3% involved people actually knew how to adjust their chair, and even fewer understood how to position their body properly by sitting in neutral.
Hiring an ergonomist will help you and your employees adjust those expensive chairs they are complaining are uncomfortable. And if they’re sitting in old, worn out chairs, having an ergonomist come to evaluate the employees and their specific needs will allow you to purchase appropriate chairs.
To schedule an ergonomic assessment for yourself or your company please contact: Serafine@ergoarts.net.
