How to Properly Sit and Stand At Your Desk While Working

Whether you are working in a 24/7 mission-critical work environment or from your home office, it is important to have an ergonomic posture to prevent injuries such as herniated discs, overall muscle weakness, metabolic syndrome, and musculoskeletal disorders among many others. Here are a few tips to help you understand how to sit or stand properly while working at your desk.

Ergonomic Arm Position

An aspect that is often overlooked when working at your desk is the position of your arms. The arms should be angled at 90 degrees and the desk should be set to the height of your forearms. Note that it is preferable to have the arms sit on the armrests rather than the surface itself to ensure the 90-degree angle is respected. A good way to determine if you have enough space is to move the chair up to the desk and see if the armrests can fit under the work surface. If it is not possible to fit the armrests below the chair, it might be better to opt for adjustable chairs or even better, an adjustable workstation.

Other advantages of height-adjustable workstations in the workplace are their versatility for being user-friendly. For instance, people that are shorter, taller, or have disabilities will have access to the same level of comfort at work. Standing desks also allows users to alternate between sitting and standing throughout the day.

While working on a standing desk can help improve your position throughout the day, it is still important to make sure you are standing properly. For instance, the forearms must be bent at 90 degrees with the work surface. In other words, the height of the surface should be set to reach the height of your forearms.

Ergonomic Leg Position

Whenever you are working in a seated position, the desk should allow you to stretch your legs when rolling the chair underneath the surface. When working in a standing position, your feet and hips should be positioned in a straight line. It is recommended to breakdown your schedule into 20 minutes sessions for sitting and standing throughout the day.

Ergonomic Neck Position

A common mistake with people that work at their desks is to have their heads slightly forward to get a closer look at the monitors. However, this posture is known for causing strain on the neck muscles. You can correct this by bringing your neck back to its original position, looking ahead, and pushing the chin back as if holding something against it.

Ergonomic Accessories

LCD Monitors

While it is helpful to have in mind your shoulder and neck posture, it can be highly beneficial to place the monitors correctly to help you keep an ergonomic posture throughout the day. Constantly having to look up and down to the monitors can create fatigue, pain, and muscle discomfort over time. The recommended viewing distance is anywhere between 50 and 100 centimeters from the eyes to the surface of the screen.

Keyboards

The position of elbows, wrists, and hands and how we use keyboards and mice is often overlooked. Not surprisingly, wrist pain is the third most common problem after eye and back strain. However, acquiring an ergonomic keyboard or mouse is also one of the most affordable investments to improve our posture at work.

Mouse

The principle behind using the mouse properly is similar to the keyboard explained earlier. The goal is to have the hand sit on the mouse on a natural position to avoid any strain on the wrist. You can achieve this by having the fingers aligned on a straight position. Mouses designed with a lower profile can help avoid having a weird upward angle on the wrist. It is also important to know that it is better to move the mouse by moving the arm rather than the wrist. If you feel pain in the wrist at the end of a workday, purchasing an ergonomic mouse will definitely help you improve the hand posture. Here are a few examples of ergonomic mouses.

Ergonomic Posture

In summary, having an ergonomic posture while working is the sum of the whole body posture, from the way you place your legs, arms, shoulders, neck, and hands. However, having the right ergonomic accessories can highly improve to keep the overall posture and avoid common injuries such as muscle strain. Sustema has over 20+ years designing and manufacturing ergonomic control room consoles for 24/7 work environments. We take pride in providing the most advanced console systems in terms of technology and ergonomy.