This article tells you how to ensure that any risks posed by workstations and computers in the workplace are reduced. It is the perfect guide for the employer hiring employees for the first time.
Workstations and Health and Safety
Employers should keep in mind that under UK health and safety regulations, the workplace provided for any employee must be a safe one. The definition of ‘safe’ includes many things, but as a general rule of thumb employers should ensure that employees are not exposed to any unnecessary risks or even the slightest thing that has the potential to cause harm. Remember that all people are different, so what might only cause minimal annoyance or injury to one person might seriously cripple another. Health and safety equipment can be purchased in several ways from saving the cash needed to getting finance from cash experts like http://wongaforbusiness.com.
Visual Displays
The Visual Display Unit of a computer is something that can cause eyestrain and other types of risks for employees. To mitigate these risks, you should ensure that they are adaptable to the needs of individual employees, and that a clear font type, screen image and adequate spacing are set as standard on the computer. Employers should be careful to ensure that flickering screens, or screens that are otherwise damaged or faulty are identified as soon as they arise, since these types of faults can cause eye injury or strain in employees, and in particular those employees who use the computer a lot.
Keyboards
Keyboards should be clean and employees should be able to keep their workstation and computer keyboard clean at work. Dirty, unhygienic keyboards can spread disease and increase sickness records among employees. A good way of ensuring the hygiene of an office keyboard is to leave computer wipes alongside every computer keyboard. Employees should be encouraged to wipe their keyboard clean before and after they finish work on one. Signs can be used to give gentle reminders about hand hygiene when using computers in the office.
Keyboards that have the facility to tilt can solve a range of problems among employees from eyestrain to back problems. This allows the employee to adopt a comfortable work position and ensures that fatigue at work is reduced.
Work Chairs
The ideal work chair is one that has a height adjustment facility and is solid and stable enough to support even the heaviest of employees. Providing a tilt function in an office chair is also a good idea as this aids employees to find a comfortable seated position and work comfortably.
Breaks from Computers
An employee’s work schedule should be planned so that they are allowed regular breaks from the work station. Constantly being seated in the same position at a workstation not only encourages fatigue and boredom in employees, but it also has the potential to impact their physical health. Regular breaks therefore are of much benefit and employees can be rotated when there are lots of computer based tasks to be done so that no one employee is burdened with being seated constantly at a computer or workstation.