Workstation - DSE and VDU Safety

What we'll do now is have a look at the general working area, just a sort of overview of the office environment. So, when you go up to your desk, you need to keep the desk nice and clean and tidy. Not have too much stuff on it and have all the equipment where you need it. Now, a little bit of thought and a little bit of planning could help you a lot within any DSE type assessment. So, from here, for example, we've got the keyboards nice and close. I've also got the wrist supports to give a little bit more stability there. The mouse, make sure you keep that in line and close to you, so you're not leaning. The whole idea of a good DSE workstation is to be upright position and not so you're leaning forward. What you can find after a period of time, you find yourself cheating and leaning forward this way and then leaning and then your keyboard slowly starts moving over here or the mouse over here and you're straining the whole time. So, try and keep it in the position you need. Maybe you can put a little post-it note on your screen just to remind you of your position. It stops some of the possible problems.

The other part of planning could be things like answering the phone. If you have a phone around the back, I've got to twist to then pick the phone up. By having the phone in front of me, I can quite easily lean forward, pick the phone up, and answer it without having to have any of the twisting action, the twisting round here. So, look at the area where you're working. If you've got something like twin monitors, the monitors are where you need them, so you may need to completely move the position of your chair if you're working on this one here. And in this example, we've got a laptop pairing a separate monitor, so most of my work will be here. So, I've got to keep my eyes in line with the top of the screen, so roughly when you follow the line here, it's going in line with the screen. If you've got two monitors and another one over this side, exactly the same height, we've made it higher here by putting this onto a slight spacer. You can get these at different heights and different designs. This one's got a drawer and others just literally lift the monitor up a certain height.

And so, look at the entire area. If you're doing work on a laptop, then use something like this, which actually lifts the monitor up and use a separate keyboard. If you're just using a laptop straight down, you'll find yourself leaning forward looking down the whole time which would put a lot of strain on your neck. So, trying to keep the whole area as nice and easy as possible to work in. For other devices, you may well find you have to use a different type of device. For example, this here is a trackpad. Try not to leave it somewhere out of the way. Have it within your working area. If you have to use the trackpad and the mouse, you may need to use it here or adjust the whole layout so that everything is nice and central. Or if this is all you're using, then move the mouse out of the way, bring the trackpad in so you can then use that much easier with the work you're doing.

Also, think about the screen and the resolution you're working with. Don't feel you have to really strain your eyes and have small text if you're reading a word document. Increase the size of it. There are always adjustments on there that can increase the size up to 500 times the original size. So, look at the size of the text you have. Look at the resolution. Maybe you'll find it's much easier to have a high resolution, which makes it a lot clearer. Other times you might want a lower resolution, depending on what sort of work you're doing. Also, within the general work area make sure your chair is set right, that your back is well into the chair. You're not pushing down on the underside of your thighs and your feet are flat on the floor. Now, with this sort of environment where it's very easy to then get lazy. So please make sure that you look at your workstation the whole time. You make sure it's okay. It's all within reach. It's clutter-free. So, if you've got papers move them out of the way. And if you do have any problems with neck pain or back pain, first place is looking at your workstation and look at the time you spend on it. It may be just as much as getting out to have regular rests and break from using computers can be a lot easier solution to the problem.