Determining the Effects of Back Support on the Comfortability and Productivity of BPO Employees

Abstract

Back pain is the leading common occupation disease found in industries with activities requiring manual labor and sitting for long periods for the years 2015, 2013 and 2011. The nature of sedentary work is at potential source of workrelated musculoskeletal symptom. Back support has been known as a support device on chairs. However, it still does not meet the needs of user to ease comfort while performing work seated tasks (Olabode et al., 2017). This paper intends to assess the current component of the back support, identify which component has the greatest impact on productivity and comfortability, and develop an ergonomic design of back support to increase comfortability and productivity level of employees. Regression analysis was utilized to determine the component that have the most impact on comfortability and productivity. Results showed that curve on the lumbar region greatly affects comfortability whereas the greatest predictor for productivity was the height of the back support. Therefore, the proposed back support would serve as a supporting device in call center industry to help increase comfortability and productivity of BPO employees.