ingles

Ingles
ERGONOMICS IN THE OFFICE ENVIRONMENT

Ergonomics in the office environment ranges from business process analysis to workplace design regarding furniture, equipment, computer systems, and environmental factors. This chapter will focus on ergonomic aspects of non territorial offices and its consequences in the change of work practices, office designs, and tools. The chapter will keep apractical approach to the subject, and the content is based on research work as well as hands-on experience. The objectives are to give the reader a broad overview of the different aspects of ergonomic issues applicable to office work. The chapter focuses on the requirements found in offices planned for flexible work practices (i.n. non territorial offices). However, most requirements areapplicable to any office environment.
THE OFFICE AS A TOOL FOR OFFICE WORK—A BUSINESS
PROCESS ANALYSIS APPROACH TO OFFICE DESIGN
Introduction
The established view of office design and office work has been contested by many companies since the beginning of the 1990s. Questions such as, “Why do we have offices?” and “Why do we work the way we do in offices?” have led to the emergence of a number ofalternative solutions to office design. Most of them are based on the concept of nonterritorial or free address offices in which a given desk, office, or workstation is intended to be used by different people at different times.
It must, however, be understood that the physical design of the office is only a part of the change. Alternative working styles and changes in organizations have had an evengreater impact on the behavior of the people working in the office. It is important that the management has a clear understanding that when transforming the office to support flexible work practices the primary focus must be on people’s needs and behavior rather than on actual interior design.




ERGONOMICS IN THE OFFICE ENVIRONMENT
6.80 ERGONOMICS AND SAFETY
Based on experiences fromresearch performed in the United States and Sweden some critical factors for success of the office design process have been identified. These include:
● A clear identification of the project owner
● Projects that are productivity driven and not cost driven
● Identification and realization of benefits for the office staff—“What is in it for me?”
● Staff involvement in the process
● All aspects ofthe project considered as a whole, including the available space, interior
design, information technology, organization, and working practices
● Good interior design
● Openness and flexibility to meet future requirements
Hands-on Experience
Research projects, with the objective of evaluating the working environment of the “flexible office” concept, have been carried out in Sweden . A summaryof the outcome of one of those projects follows:
The purpose of the project was to evaluate five new offices based on the “flexible office”approach and to compare the results of the evaluation with the implementation process.The five offices are branch offices in the same company, but due to a regional organizational setup the implementation process was carried out in very different ways indifferent offices. The conclusion points out the importance of the process and how it is managed. Figures and illustrate and describe the results from two of the offices in comparison with the total population.
The black rectangles in the figures represent the mean value for the particular office and the gray and white bars describe the levels of confidence for all five offices (the same in bothdiagrams). Rectangles positioned on the left or the right side of the median line therefore represent the level of dissatisfaction or success for that office.Thus shows an officewhere the personnel are quite satisfied with their new office design and work practices, while shows an office with the opposite result.
Evaluation projects like the one just described put the focus on the implementation...