On the daily management call, they provided an update about all the logistics around slowly opening the office again. One of the guidelines is that they are allowed to have one person per 300 square feet. They are not rushing to bring people back into the office, but there are some people who might insist on going back into the office for an interesting reason.

The HR resource mentioned that she is seeing multiple worker’s comp claims being filed. This is not a surprise to me. Within a short period of time, all the employees who could work from home were told to stay home. It was a hasty change and a challenging one for people who have never worked from home before. They were not given any office supplies/equipment, and they were not given any information regarding how to set up a proper workstation at home. This left it up to each of the employees to figure out how to work at home. 

I heard examples of people working on a laptop at the dining room table or sitting on the couch working on a tray. It was only a matter of time before people would start reporting injuries as a result of not working in an ergonomic-friendly way.

I have personal experience with this. As a consultant, sometimes I have to work wherever there is room. I might have to work in random, abandoned cubicles that have limited opportunity for customization. Years ago I was on a project in which several of the consultants were working in a conference room on laptops. This is a bad way to work. Ideally, you need the keyboard separate from the screen. If you have the keyboard at the right level, you will be staring down at the screen. If you have the screen at the right level, then the keyboard will be too high. I had a pre-existing issue that was exacerbated by working this way. It eventually led to frozen shoulder, which required painful physical therapy to resolve.

When you are spending so much time sitting and working on a computer, regardless of where you work, you must make proper ergonomics a priority. An ounce of prevention is much better than a pound of cure.