Back Pain and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome are some of the most common work-related injuries costing businesses money every year. These injuries are often caused by ordinary tasks at work such as sitting in an office chair, repetitive motion or heavy lifting. When applying ergonomic office chair principles in the workplace, these problems can be prevented.

Ergonomics in the office, or as easily stated, the study of the workplace as it relates to the worker can help provide a solution to these preventable injuries. Buying good office chairs and ergonomic furniture can help prevent Repetitive Stress Injuries as well as prevent back injury and help maintain a healthy back while at the office. When starting a new ergonomic program in the office, the goal is to adapt the workplace to a specific user and their specific tasks at hand.

How to position each workstation is dependent on the job description, required tasks and physical make up of the person performing the job. Typically people begin having back pain or sustain a back injury while on the job for quite some time and it normally takes quite some time for that same employee to start to realize how bad the injury is becoming in time to properly fix it.

An injury where no actual accident was involved, where the pain comes as a result of job activities and the requirements of the task is hard to catch in time to fix easily. Poor body mechanics (such as slouching in an office chair), prolonged activity without motion, repetitive motions for long periods of time, and fatigue are major factors contributing to these injuries. These injuries may occur from sitting in an office chair or using the desk and computer keyboard at the wrong heights allowing for improper blood flow. All these things could be avoided simply by positioning the office chair and desk to the user and teaching proper posture in the chair.

Accidental injury usually results when an event which a person did not expect triggers an injury from that unexpected event. This is not so with most office and employee workers compensation injuries anymore. A growing number of these injuries being reported in the office do not involve an accident but rather the tolls that one takes on the body when sitting at a desk for the long hours required by most jobs these days. With good ergonomics and a little practice, these injuries can be avoided and productivity has been known to increase with the employees being more comfortable and in better overall body health to do the work at hand.