A medium sized council asked enricoSmog ergonomic practitioners to carry out an ergonomic assessment of their IT dept. Staff were reporting musculoskeletal discomfort and pain and there was also a high incidence of absence and high staff turnover.
Each staff member was given an ergonomic assessment, a task analysis carried out and quantitative risk assessments undertaken. One of the main tasks of the IT workers is to upgrade laptop and desktop systems, while other tasks included dealing with network issues. In all cases a lack of workspace and cramp working conditions was found to be the main culprits.
A number of suggestions were made; the main one was to remove the large volume of equipment off the IT workers desks and have these put into computer racks, where it was easier to test between 8-10 laptops at a time. The large desktop computers that had to be tested could be placed on a bespoke designed worktop.
Equipment redundancy was achieved by using a switchbox to allow access to up to 10 laptops during system builds. This enabled the IT professional to be able to use just one monitor, keyboard and mouse but still be able to access all machines.
