It goes without saying that most of today’s office jobs take a heavy toll on our bodies. All of that typing, hunching, craning and sitting for hours on end is quite literally a pain in the neck. Not to mention a pain in the back and joints, too! All of this discomfort can take a hefty toll on an employee’s ability to perform well in the office, with the lifetime cost of carpal tunnel surgery estimated by the National Institute of Health at a whopping $30,000. In fact, some research puts the medical costs of an employee with a bad back is 60% higher than their healthy counterpart. In addition, those working with pain lose on average 5.5 hours of productivity a week.
Ergonomic Solutions are Worth It
At first glance, implementing ergonomic solutions can seem just as costly as the problem itself. After all, the “best” Herman Miller ergonomic chairs clocking in somewhere between $1,000 to $2,000. This is particularly prohibitive for entrepreneurs and employees who spend a lot of time working from home. These workers assume they must self-fund any ergonomic “hacks.”
But as this excellent CNN article, Take the pain out of work, shows, there are a number of ways to integrate ergonomic solutions into any workspace without breaking the bank. The article advocates first taking advantage of free fixes, like making sure you take breaks that get you moving throughout the day and lobbying your workplace to buy ergonomic equipment for your home office (you’d be surprised how many companies are willing to do just this in order to mitigate long term healthcare costs).
The article also notes (and we would agree!) that most ergonomic equipment isn’t all that costly. A simple laptop stand can help prevent both back and eye strain, and a split ergonomic keyboard can reduce the need for costly surgeries.
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We highly recommend giving the CNN article a read for more on this topic. Do you have any particularly innovative ergonomic solutions of your own? Let us know in the comments below.
