Technology and Workplace Wellness – Easing the Strain

Have you ever considered how technology can help improve office wellness?

We recently invited a company into our office to complete an ergonomic assessment. Initially, we braced ourselves for a hefty price tag of adjustments and a laundry list of purchases to help ease the discomfort some employees were experiencing. We were pleasantly surprised to learn that we had minimal adjustments to make and were reminded of how important it is to use technology to aid us in our workplace wellness.

One change for us was making sure that employees who are on the phone a lot use wireless telephone headsets. I’m not talking about the headsets you might be thinking of…the big, clunky, over the head ones with cords that tangled and limited your mobility. There was a day here at Taylored Systems when, prior to selling a telephone headset we’d ask , “Do you want an over the ear or over the head piece,” or “ Would you prefer a one-ear or two-ear piece headset”? And don’t even think about those headsets being wireless…these had a limited radius of mobility!

Today, thanks to blue tooth technology and the types of ear pieces prevalent with iPods and cell phones, most people have come to expect and enjoy the small size and excellent quality that is also available with business phone compatible head and ear pieces.

You may recall a scene from the movie Black Sheep where Chris Farley’s character is making campaign calls and he straps the phone receiver to his head using a sweatband in order to have his hands free to work. Now it’s easier – no sweat band (or sweat) required. In fact, we’ve seen business telephones adapt by providing “blue tooth integration”. This technology allows you to “pair” a standard Bluetooth headset with your office phone, so you can seamlessly answer, originate, and terminate phone calls directly from the headset. It provides the standard headset features with the mobility of Bluetooth.

We recently worked with a customer who decided to swap out their cordless telephones for cordless headsets because they wanted the mobility and convenience of a headset with the quality of a business telephone system. It means increased productivity for employers and convenience for employees.

So what does this all mean for us and our ergonomic study? We purchased a few foot rests, adjusted a few monitors, and encouraged everyone to utilize a headset…and things are working great.

This was Amy Hershman’s last conversation with Bill Taylor and Steve McDonald.