The pitfalls of the traditional office ergonomics model in the current mobile work environment: Is visual ergonomics health literacy the remedy?

Abstract

Mobile technology has revolutionised how we work. It is now relatively easy to work anywhere and anytime, but this has placed the onus is on mobile (or flexible) workers to set up their own work environment for comfort and ease of use. Vision is an important driver of posture, and hence visual ergonomics principles are integral for setting up digital devices. If mobile workers do not have visual ergonomics knowledge, or are unable to apply visual ergonomics knowledge to appropriately set up their work environment, then they are at risk of developing visual-related occupational health issues due to exposure to adverse physical work environments. To address this potential health care issue, we propose the introduction of Visual Ergonomics Health Literacy. This would provide mobile workers (including school children) with the knowledge and skills to set up their work environment for comfort and ease of use, wherever they work. It is important to address this issue now before we have a widespread epidemic of discomfort and injury from not applying sound visual ergonomics principles to work environments.

Work-Related Health Literacy: A Scoping Review to Clarify the Concept

“…Reference objects of conceptualizations are characteristics of individuals (such as practical use of knowledge and skills or personal values), circumstances of the immediate work environment (such as social relationships in the workplace or the possibility of informal learning at work) as well as aspects of social security (such as the protection or promotion of employee health by governmental or legally prescribed occupational health and safety measures). Another aspect of conceptualizations is the time horizon to which “health literacy in the workplace” refers: all articles refer to the current work situation of employees (work ability) [ 3 , 4 , 7 , 19 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 ], while some approaches also have a longer-term perspective, on the one hand the entire working life of an employee (employability) [ 3 , 7 , 19 , 50 , 54 ] and/or on the other hand also the future viability (competitiveness) of companies [ 3 , 7 , 19 , 44 , 45 , 49 , 50 , 51 ]. Moreover, we have the works of Long and Richter [ 53 ] (visual ergonomics health literacy) as well as Mårtensson and Hensing [ 48 ] (health literacy in the context of rehabilitation and return to work) and Ståhl et al [ 54 ] (social insurance health literacy) expressing further possible reference objects of “health literacy in the workplace”.…”

“…Another aspect of conceptualizations is the time horizon to which “health literacy in the workplace” refers: all articles refer to the current work situation of employees (work ability) [ 3 , 4 , 7 , 19 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 ], while some approaches also have a longer-term perspective, on the one hand the entire working life of an employee (employability) [ 3 , 7 , 19 , 50 , 54 ] and/or on the other hand also the future viability (competitiveness) of companies [ 3 , 7 , 19 , 44 , 45 , 49 , 50 , 51 ]. Moreover, we have the works of Long and Richter [ 53 ] (visual ergonomics health literacy) as well as Mårtensson and Hensing [ 48 ] (health literacy in the context of rehabilitation and return to work) and Ståhl et al [ 54 ] (social insurance health literacy) expressing further possible reference objects of “health literacy in the workplace”. In view of more flexible, mobile workplaces that are increasingly characterized by advances in digitalization and in view of demographic and disease dynamics outlined in the introduction, we included these components in the presentation of individual “work-related” or “occupational health literacy” in Figure 2 .…”

“…Since not all articles define those key terms explicitly, we also extracted and categorized theoretical statements or conceptualizations (nine articles [3,7,[48][49][50][51][52][53][54]) in addition to explicit definitions (six articles [4,19,[45][46][47]). All articles directly or indirectly address the aspects "access", "understand", "assess", and "apply" that Sørensen et al [12] synthesized in their conceptualization of health literacy.…”

A heuristic international glimpse at SARS‐CoV‐2 effects on work‐home equilibrium and women

“…Home offices often include workstations that are poorly designed and can be improved through placing a pillow for lumbar support, raising a laptop for better posture, and ensuring windows are behind the monitor to avoid glare (Davis et al, 2020). Visual ergonomics in mobile technology and flexible work environments optimize the location of a device, along with display features and age specific needs (Long & Richter, 2019). However there has not been a focus on teamwork and allocation of tasks between household members within the domestic domain.…”

Opportunities to enhance collective activity to meet the demands of a task: A case of job rotation among port workers

“…Though the number of members per team at both cargo terminals could change, there were six to seven professional functions that were required for each work team: coordinator, weighmaster, portaló 2 , traffic controller, docker, and gantry/crane operator (Table 1). With the exception of the team coordinator, port workers could be called upon to perform any of the required professional functions-a kind of 'nomadic' style of work [29] that is not restricted to a designated workstation. 1…”