Tag Archives: ergonomic office chairs

A Productive Office

When sitting in an office for hours on end, it really is important that, while working, you’re experiencing some ‘feel good’ factor. After all, if you feel good, you do perform better. So, what can be done by you to achieve that dizzy height of feeling good at your desk? Let’s go and have a look.

No two offices are the same, though you will be able to generalise between a private office (maybe for the manager or a supervisor), an open-plan office environment (several people in the same big room) and the ‘cubicle’ environment (false walls which don’t meet the ceiling but still give you some privacy from the next person along). Depending on the nature of the work, you may have silence or, in the many call centres, you may be fighting to make yourself heard.

For me, I would find that background noise would make it impossible for me to concentrate, so I’d have to do something to address that and, believe it or not, soft furnishings do absorb sound. When I say soft furnishings, I’m talking about carpets, the cushioning in your ergonomic office chair and, yes, those room dividers. If you’ve ever been inside a completely empty room in a house, you’ll have noticed that your voice will create an echo. Put curtains, armchairs and cushions in there and you’ll realise that there is no longer an echo. So help your office space soak up some of that unwanted noise by adding personal touches: they’ll help with that sound problem and begin that ‘feel good’ atmosphere.

Correct Seating

To work comfortably at your computer, you’ll need light and, rather than get the glare of the sun on your screen, situate your desk to have light helping rather than hindering you. Purchase an angle-poise lamp which, with its flexible stem, you can get that light going exactly where you want it to. Fix the lamp in a position where you’re not looking directly into the light and then use the flexible stem to get the light to do its job. Now doesn’t that feel better?

I have an aversion to blue. I could never work in an environment that boasted that colour. For me, I would need yellow and maybe russet, as these autumnal colours make me feel good. I could enhance my office environment by adding a couple of feng shui paintings which include these colours and maybe purchase my own sunny ergonomic office chair, again making me feel very good indeed.

Ergonomic Office Chairs
Ergonomic Office Chairs

If I’m working long hours, I’m going to get little chance to enjoy the outdoors, so I might think of bringing nature to me in the form of plants. Remember how humans and plants complement each other, one wanting oxygen and throwing out carbon dioxide (humans) and the other doing the reverse. Rather than my office space becoming a little stuffy in those hot months, I’ll have the fragrance of the plants and could also make use of an air purifier to make everything just perfect.

If all of these personal yet minimal adjustments make me feel good, I can’t see the boss complaining. Can you?

Ergonomic Office Chairs
Ergonomic Office Chairs

Office Evolution

The workplace has been changing over the decades from office rooms, to partitions and cubicles, moving on to open space offices, and now going towards hot-desking areas used by executives with their own lap-tops. Even the home office users are on the verge of converging their home office with home living with new high-tech devices and trends such as integrated home cinema and home automation. Computer usage such as Internet and email is now diluted between mobile phones, blackberry, miniature laptops and giant desktops and is now making ground through our TV screens as some of the main Internet websites can now be browsed on your super thin / flat / sharp latest hd tv screen.

At the same time tv is also bleeding into the Internet ever directing us to a web-page after a program or prompting us to watch the next episode on the tv channel website. Everything is merging, tv , computer, mobile devices, telephones. Everything is converging, work life and home life. Everything is one: entertainment & communication. The telephone is now on the Internet with Skype and voice over IP, the music is now accessible on TV and on the Internet in the form of downloads. Games can be played equally on computers and play stations wired to your TV.

So is working from home

So I ask myself in this ever-changing environment what will be the home office furniture of the future. It sure will need to be as versatile as our lifestyles. An office chair will have to be convertible in a lounge chair or a game chair, a desk will need to be modular (adjustable and extendable) as well as mobile (desk with wheels) and ergonomic. You can’t have an ergonomic desk without and ergonomic chair and that would be an Ergohuman

Any idea what tomorrow’s home office will look like?

Ergonomic Office Chair
Ergohuman
Ergohuman Office Chair with Leg Rest
Ergohuman Office Chair with Leg Rest

Office Chairs

Certification & Guarantee

Enjoy Office Chair

The Enjoy office chair is certified to BS EN 1335-2:2000. According to this standard, the chair is considered to be structurally suitable and sufficiently stable for use as an office task chair for up to 8 hours a day by persons weighing up to 110kg or 17 stones.

Guarantee – 5 Year Manufacturers Guarantee on chair structure, with 3 years guarantee on moving parts and upholstery.

Enjoy Mesh Office Chairs
Enjoy Mesh Office Chairs

Ergohuman Office Chair

The Ergohuman chair is certified to BS EN 5459-2:2000 and is therefore structurally suitable and sufficiently stable for use as an office task chair for up to 24 hours a day by persons weighing up to 150kg or 23.5 stones.

Guarantee – 10 Year Manufacturers Guarantee on chair structure, with 3 years guarantee on moving parts and upholstery.

Ergohuman Office Chairs
Ergohuman Office Chairs

Ergohuman Plus

The Ergohuman Plus is in the inital stages of testing for certification to BS EN 5459-2:2000. We expect certification to be complete in early 2010.

Guarantee – 10 Year Manufacturers Guarantee on chair structure, with 3 years guarantee on moving parts and upholstery.

Ergohuman Plus Ergonomic Office Chairs
Ergohuman Plus Ergonomic Office Chairs

Mirus Office Chair

The The Mirus Office Chair is the latest addition to the Ergohuman range, the Mirus chair boasts the ingeniously simple single lever control which operates the three most frequently used chair functions – seat height, seat depth and back tilt can all be operated from a single point of contact.

Guarantee – 5 Year Manufacturers Guarantee on chair structure, with 3 years guarantee on moving parts and upholstery.

Mirus Mesh Office Chair
Mirus Mesh Office Chair

Nefil Office Chair

The Nefil Office Chair is the top of the range from the acclaimed Ergohuman family of office chairs. The Nefil chairs are available in mesh, leather, fabric, microfibre or combinations of mesh and leather with or without headrests

Guarantee – 5 Year Manufacturers Guarantee on chair structure, with 3 years guarantee on moving parts and upholstery.

Nefil Office Chair
Nefil Office Chair

Genidia Office Chair

The An Ergonomic Office Chair, embracing the most innovative technology and materials, our state-of-the-art Design, Research and Development centre have pushed the boundaries in task seating to unprecedented levels. The concept is a highly designed chair with revolutionary technology unique to the task seating industry.

Guarantee – 5 Year Manufacturers Guarantee on chair structure, with 3 years guarantee on moving parts and upholstery.

Genidia Office Chair
Genidia Office Chair

Buy your Office Chair from Ergohuman.net

Mirus Office Chair

The latest addition to the Ergohuman chair range, the Mirus chair boasts the ingeniously simple single lever control which operates the three most frequently
used chair functions. Seat height, seat depth and back tilt can all be operated
from a single point of contact.

Mirus Office Chairs Head Rest
Mirus Office Chairs Head Rest

The design concept of the Mirus chair also incorporates a multi-directional interactive neck roll which can help to relax tired neck and shoulder muscles. The 3-dimensional automatic flexible lumbar support system provides full support to the lumbar region with interactive and dynamic movement, intuitively adjusting to your needs. A ‘zero pressure’ seat cushion helps to distribute weight evenly across the seat pad to provide maximum comfort.

Mirus Office Chair 3D Headrest
Mirus Office Chair 3D Headrest

The Mirus chair is 98% recyclable, has Greenguard Indoor Air Quality certification and meets EN 1335. Available in a choice of white and aluminium frame, black and aluminium frame or all-black frame with a mesh back and fabric seat, the colour combinations are contemporary and exciting.

Mirus Office Chairs
Mirus Office Chairs

The Mirus Mesh Chair is available in three frame finishes – white, black and polished aluminium/black; with the choice of the unique MD-flex headrest, adjustable 3D headrest or headrest-free, combined with an extensive selection of coloured mesh and fabrics creating an almost unlimited variation to suit your requirements.

Mirus Mesh Office Chair
Mirus Mesh Office Chair Flexible Lumbar Support

Ergonomics in the Office

Ergonomics is about getting the situation to fit you, rather than you to fit the situation. So, for example, when looking at an ergonomic chair, getting the chair to fit you would mean addressing points such as your height, your size and your job duties.

Your height is an important point to address, as a perfect sitting position will mean that your feet are flat on the floor, while your thighs are more or less parallel to the floor. It is easy to see that if your chair is too low for you, your knees will be coming up to meet you and there will be less support to your lumbar region, as your thighs are not making perfect contact with the office chair. If the chair is too high for you, your feet may not fully touch the floor, making steadiness an issue. A ergonomic height-adjustable chair will help solve these needs.

If you are small in stature, or somewhat overweight, the armrests of the chair may not serve their purpose of supporting your lower arms, again to keep them parallel to the floor and resting on the desk comfortably.

Once the ergonomic chair is adjusted to your needs, you can identify whether the desk height meets your specifications. It’s all right getting the seat absolutely perfect but is the table or desk too high or too low for your wrists to rest comfortably near the keyboard or the paperwork?

This is where electric height adjustable desks show their worth. As the name suggests, a electric height-adjustable desk will allow you to get the correct height for your perfect workstation.

The theory of ergonomics also addresses a cognitive aspect. For example, why did you place your phone to the left of your monitor and why so far back on the desk? If it’s an office tool that you use quite often, is it in a comfortable and accessible position? Why isn’t the monitor directly in front of you? Regular use of the computer will mean that your body rests in a twisted position (neck and hips) for long periods of time. The placing a heavy dictionary at the back of the desk, instead of closer at hand, will cause pressure to your hand, wrist, arm and shoulder, every time you reach for it.

Ergonomics is a serious business which, once you’ve got it right, encourages your body to respect good posture. An ergonomic desk and adjustable ergonomic chair might cost a little more than run-of-the-mill office furniture but for all the right reasons. Surveys have shown that working in an ergonomic environment increases productivity by as much as 20%, the enhanced posture having the knock-on effect of increasing work satisfaction. With less posture-related illnesses and the resulting time off work, creating an ergonomic office ticks all the right boxes.

Ergonomic Office Chairs
Ergonomic Office Chairs
Electric Height Adjustable Desks
Electric Height Adjustable Desks

Within these Walls – Cubicles or Open-Plan?

Offices used to have four walls but, as time moved on, open-plan moved in and, instead of having private space in which to perform one’s job, ‘one office for all’ became fashionable, making a quiet working environment a thing of the past.

Then the cubicle design arrived in the late sixties, giving a feeling of privacy but a continued problem with background noise.  Described as an acoustic sieve, our understanding the difficulty of this environment probably only hits home when we phone a call centre for some kind of advice and can hear everyone else but the person that is helping us.

As office space became smaller, the computer industry seemed to respond, large monitors being replaced by flat screens and filing cabinets being replaced by CDs and pen drives.  Research in America proved that by removing all the then redundant filing cabinets, offices could be smaller and the cost of renting space could be greatly reduced.

However, working in a cubicle can be very stressful, since background noise does make concentration very difficult.  Personal space may now be down to a ten feet by ten feet square (although it is only three-sided), within which you have everything you need.  Your office is transforming into an Ergonomic Office, so makes sence to have a good ergonomic office chair. Your ergonomic desk may now be L-shaped against two walls, so the flat screen lifted from the desk top by an adjustable monitor arm makes sense, as it not only creates more workable space but allows you to adjust its angle without exerting yourself.

Getting the best office chair for you is now paramount, as all actions will most likely be done from a sitting position. An adjustable chair should not only address appropriate back support but have swivel movement and be correctly sized to fit both the user and the designated work space.

Research has also indicated that the two most important points that need to be addressed in a successful working space are the ability to work uninterrupted and to have easy and frequent interaction with others.  If these two factors are realised, team work and job satisfaction can increase by as much as twenty three percent. A cocktail office may therefore be the answer.  Rather like a cubicle but with a sliding glass door, this office will improve the acoustic situation and an open door can indicate the occupant’s agreement to interruption at selected times. That same door will also have a positive psychological effect, as having one’s own office does give a feeling of importance, which often displays itself in the increased quantity and quality of work produced.

Ergonomic Office chairs – choose yours

Ergonomic Office Chairs
Ergonomic Office Chairs