It sounds strange and many people will disagree at first. Office work itself is not a disease, but performance of such work results in various diseases, illnesses, and ailments. Let us ask ourselves – why?

            First, let us have a look at office work itself, which means long-lasting maintaining of a forced sitting position when we use a computer. It should be noted that the sitting position is not our natural position, for which we have been prepared by the evolution. It does not mean that sitting is bad; we talk about long-lasting keeping of such a position. People are made to move, especially in standing position. Our muscles should work, and the load imposed on our musculoskeletal system is much lower in the standing position than when we sit. The last several dozens of years have changed us in people "ridden" to the desk at which we work. Not many persons realise that we sit more than 80,000 hours long in our professional lives.

Office work means also staying in an artificial environment, where both ventilation and illumination (artificial light plus a monitor) are not natural, which in time results in degradation of our health, if the minimum requirements on ergonomics are not met. Opponents of our reasoning would say that if it is important, you (the society) should note this aspect and draw adequate legal regulations, the meeting of which would allow employers to prepared appropriate working conditions. Institutions established for such purposed have drawn up regulations, which – among other things: order employers to meet the minimum safety-at-work requirements when organising a working place through meeting of the regulation of the Labour Code. Many people have made use of these regulations to a very small extent, receiving an additional payment for corrective glasses for work at a monitor. However, many additional elements have been forgotten, which is proven by the results of the Ergotest studies (results are available on www.zdrowebiuro.pl), conducted with a sample of almost 3,200 internauts under the auspices of, among other institutions: the Institute of Occupational Medicine and the Central Institute for Labour Protection, National Research Institute. The results of the test were terrifying – more than 57% of working places violate the minimum requirements on ergonomics substantially. We also find out that the definite majority of the respondents, as many as 91%, complain about pain in back and neck, 62% suffer from pain in wrists, 20% complain about chronic tingling of feet, numb calves and swollen legs, and more than 41% reports eye problems. We should add here that many diseases have already been recognised as occupational for the group of office employees, which includes the istmuth syndrome of wrist among other things.

We could ask another question: did the problem not exist some time, i.e. 20-25 years ago? The answer is not simple, because at that time, office work in our country looked different from in western countries: computers were not commonly used; nobody noticed effectiveness and efficiency at work. A remainder of that time is the image of a clerk, who comes to the office, drinks coffee, or tea, has some talk, leafs through some documents and goes back home. Such “heritage parks” are gradually disappearing after the economic changes of 1989. The test conducted makes us aware of the fact that today, we as a society start paying for the low quality of working conditions for the group of office employees, where the conditions and the standard not only diverge from legal norms, but we also remain far behind highly-developed countries.

Who would count how high the costs additional health care are – costs of treatment and rehabilitation of the diseased mentioned, how much employers lose on sick leaves, where every second leave is caused by too low level of ergonomics of working positions, not mentioning lower efficiency and competitiveness of employees in comparison with the countries mentioned? The significance of these costs should be shown by related losses of employers on the American market, amounting to 134 billion dollars a year! As an example of differences in application of ergonomic solutions, let us mention the fact that in Scandinavian countries, desks for sitting and standing work with electrical (previously mechanical) height adjustment have been in use for more than ten years, and today, more than 1/3 of all desks purchased are equipped with this mechanism, whereas in Poland desk height adjustment and mechanism for adaptation of desks to the height of the user are still surprising (although they should be easily available and commonly used as a standard).

It is worth noting that not only safety-at-work regulations should be met, but also we should be more aware and know more in this respect. As employees, we should care that our working conditions are at least conform to the law, because nobody would be willing to pay for our health losses. We often seek for reasons of our allergies, eye problems, or spine pain far from their real source. In office work, degradation of our health is slow, often unnoticeable in everyday course (we get used to some ailments). When we have noticed the diseases, they are often degenerative changes, and restoring our health constitutes a long and expensive process – if it is possible at all. Unfortunately, today work is our second home or even an environment where we spend the half of our active life. Yet, let us admit that we care more for the short moments of activity after work than for the work standards in the office.

This subject should be important for employers as well. Firstly, violation of safety-at-work regulations exposes employers at the risk of financial sanctions from supervision institutions (the National Labour Inspectorate) and legal consequences in case of legal proceedings related to compensation for degradation of health of an employee, who – working in a place which is not conform to the legal regulations in force – would prove that his/her ailments, diseases and illnesses are directly based in the conditions of his/her work. Secondly (and more importantly), winners and market leaders among companies know that they must maintain their competitive advantage with respect to other companies all the time. The only real and most important capital is people working in the company. The company’s fate depends on their engagement, creativity, and devotion to the company’s matters. History has shown many examples as to how large and stable one-man-managed organisations disappeared from the market, and other organisations, vitally acting as a whole team, one organism, became industry leaders for many years. Considering the work environment, which an employer should prepare for employees, we should remember that it speaks not only for the employer’s respect and care for employees, but - most of all - builds the foundations for the company’s success. More than half of employees’ active lives are connected to their work. Therefore, conditions in which they will stay and work would influence their activity, efficiency, engagement, and devotion to the company. The issues we refer to have already been discovered long ago among the best companies on the market, which provide their employees with appropriate ventilation with allergy-reducing filters in office rooms, invest in illumination or a high standard of office furniture. On the other hand, many employers are willing to provide such conditions, if these values will be important and crucial for employees - you can tell them that there is no use waiting anymore.

The article has been written in collaboration with the founders of the Social Educational Programme HEALTHY OFFICE, the aim of which it is to raise the awareness of the market with respect to legal regulations, ergonomics, prevention, ailments, and diseases related to office work. If you are interested in the subject, you will find a lot of important, interesting, and significant information on the webpage www.zdrowebiuro.pl.

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