Your Physical Health: The Hidden Costs of Working from Home | Part 3 of 5

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Have you ever suffered a workplace injury? I have! It was twenty years ago and my arm still has problems when I lay on or put pressure on my left shoulder. I was sitting at a desk at the wrong height and typing non-stop for eight weeks while the other secretary was out with a broken arm.

Safety at work is important in every kind of work environment. It’s easy to “see” the importance when there is machinery or heights, but even when you are on your laptop there is physical danger.

In the first two parts of this series, I talked about the opportunity to adjust how you provide online training and data security in the virtual office as well as being mindful to protect your career aspirations.  

And as I mentioned in Part 1 of this blog series, COVID-19 could be your great opportunity to mirror your mission through the better treatment of your employees.

Avoiding Danger to Physical Health

Repetitive strain injuries are no joke. Neither is the misery of a workers’ compensation claim for both the injured employee and the employer. When working from home feels temporary, any old table and chair might do. But injury can happen pretty quickly and you might not be aware of the early signs.

This kind of insidious injury is difficult to diagnose and even more difficult to pinpoint the cause – and it can have life-long negative consequences – like the injury I suffered to my shoulder and arm. Getting ahead of injuries and recognizing that an ergonomically sound work environment is important at home and in the office is worth every penny.

Even so, you do not necessarily need to spend large sums of money on the issue. This is where you have the advantage now. Take the time to explore your options to address the issue. Involve your employees in the process. You may be able to develop a process that provides as-needed intervention (less expensive) instead of trying to be one-size-fits-all (more expensive).

For example, you might use learning materials, such as short videos, “cheat sheets,” and quizzes to help employees assess and improve their work environment. In fact, OSHA has e-tools, including checklists, that you can use for free. As a result of this assessment stage, employees could submit equipment purchase requests according to a defined process. Or they could proceed to a next level of evaluation for extra help, such as a specialist consult.

Keeping It Simple

When I decided to become a consultant, one of the primary motivators was the freedom to travel. Since I had already suffered a repetitive strain injury, I knew I needed to be able to work safely from anywhere, too. But how?

After a few trips I realized that I couldn’t count on having the proper combination of chair and table heights. I shopped around for a tray table that I could disassemble and fit into my suitcase. It had to be light weight, too! Once I found the Table-Mate II table, I bought a few of them. At $35 each this was not a hardship.

Because the tray table height is very adjustable, I can work with almost any kind of chair if necessary. Because the tray part drops down easily and the whole table is pretty small, I can fit it into small spaces and easily put it away when I’m done working. For those of you in apartments, you can understand how fabulous this is!

It took me a bit longer to truly go paperless, but as information technology advanced, this got easier. Now that I can take a picture of signed document on my smart phone and send it via email, there’s nothing I can’t do on the road – with my trusty Table-Mate II tray table, that is.

The rest of my physical safety plan is even less expensive:

  • Constantly reminding myself on proper posture.
  • Taking frequent breaks even if that means waving my arms around while waiting for a web page to load.
  • Scheduling phone calls only when I have a quiet room available (even if it is the bathroom).
  • Scheduling 20-min naps after presentations or lots of video meetings (they wear me out).
  • Offering myself an unlimited Starbucks account as an employee perk; Starbucks is everywhere and as the only reliable place where the chair to table height is correct and they don’t mind if I sit there for hours, a little coffee is cheap rent for an on-the-go office!
  • Purchasing a good-looking, highly functional backpack for toting my laptop for hours through airports and cities; over-the-shoulder bags have caused muscle strain.

Make a Plan Stan

I hope it’s obvious from my example how most people’s needs for physical safety can be met with simple adjustments. I also hope my example of continuing to have symptoms from a twenty-year-old injury demonstrates how surprisingly dangerous working at a desk can be.

Maybe your new plan is simply to ask, listen, and act if necessary. Is anyone having any aches or pains from working at home? Are you? Share the diagram from the Mayo Clinic and ask them if their workspaces conform to those guidelines. If they don’t, you can explore simple options to remedy the discrepancies.

Working from home – or working from anywhere – can be a great experience, but it is not without physical danger. Thankfully, many of those danger can usually be addressed without much fuss!

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