The following article is from "The Times" South Africa. You may find it interesting if you are considering purchasing a new office chair. call
The Chair hospital if you need further assistance.
Cheap furniture hurts productivity — especially when there’s stress involved, writes Margaret Harris.
We may not like to admit it, but those of us with office jobs spend most of our time sitting, while having breakfast, driving to work and most of our working day. Sitting requires less physical effort than standing or walking, but it puts a lot of stress on the lumbar area. A suitable office chair is a critical step in preventing health problems.
“Minor aches and pains are hampering people’s ability to do their jobs. They’re not going out to the doctor and they’re not losing time from their jobs. There’s just a leakage of productivity — a silent leak,” says Fabrice Ruard, managing director of workspace designers Inspiration Office.
Inspiration Office recommends a chair that does everything a spine does: it changes shape to mimic the way your vertebras move, giving you support in all the right places.
In a recent study, workers who used a chair like this, the Steelcase Leap Chair, didn’t experience the aches and pains other workers reported. Nor did pain grow much throughout the day as it did for others. And they responded with real productivity gains of 18%. This shows that seating is not an issue you can afford to ignore.
When we talk about stress and ergonomics — it’s hard to tell which comes first, the chicken or the egg. On the one hand, stress can cause various physical ailments such as fatigue, muscle tension, and weight gain, which contribute to the tendency to slouch and use poor posture. On the other hand, bad ergonomics and posture can cause physical injuries and discomfort that then cause health-related stress and anxiety, tension headaches, backache and other ailments” says Cyril Harrisberg, CEO of The Stress Clinic.
He also says there are emotional effects of stress. “Moodiness, agitation, restlessness, the inability to relax all take their toll on your body, causing you to fidget and shuffle around to find a comfortable position — often placing yourself in poor postural alignments that you feel you need to change two minutes later. It can be a vicious circle.” When restless enough, careless shifting about can cause pulls, strains and other injury to the muscles.
Stress is a psychological and physiological response to events that upset our personal balance in some way. But the problem with the stress response is that the more it’s activated, the harder it is to shut off.
Chronic stress wears you down day after day and year after year, with no visible escape. Under sustained or severe stress, even the most well-adjusted person loses the ability to adapt. When stress overwhelms our coping resources, our bodies and minds suffer.
The stress caused by an aggressive boss or pressing deadline may need a more serious intervention, but the stress caused by a bad chair can be addressed by getting a better one, though at a price.
Mariana Kruger, sales executive at Inspiration Office, says good chairs must be adjustable to suit the sitter’s weight and height.
“The Steelcase Leap Chair, for example, adjusts to your body, weight and tasks — using height, depth, other adjustments. It gives the correct support for your lumbar and thoracic regions.” What’s more, 98% of the chair is made from recycled materials.
If people are uncomfortable, productivity will be negatively affected over the long term — people will start to suffer from migraines, shoulder tension and constriction of their breathing areas, she says. Your colon, lower back and the free flow of blood will also be affected.
Companies need to be more supportive of their staff, and not only in terms of emotional support in times of crisis, but providing supportive office furniture.
Companies that try to save money by buying cheap, badly designed chairs with no support will find themselves having to pay up for higher stress levels and falling productivity.
