Addressing the ergonomics of hybrid-working with e-Learning

The challenge

The COVID-19 pandemic brought with it many new challenges around how we work. In fact, the term ‘hybrid-working’ was almost unheard of until it became the standard for millions of workers who suddenly found themselves working from home.

Perhaps one of the biggest issues surrounding hybrid working is the difficulty of making a home-working environment into an acceptable and ergonomically optimal alternative to the office. Businesses were faced with the challenge of ensuring their employees were being provided the same level of DSE (Display Screen Equipment) support they would ordinarily receive in the office.

What we did

As expert ergonomists we quickly recognised this as a potential major long-term issue for businesses around the world. We realised that our clients urgently needed a strategy to deliver DSE support to their now-remote workforce quickly in a way that would ensure their wellbeing and meet their own health and safety obligations.

By distilling all our ergonomic expertise into the form of a single e-Learning course we were then able to offer this to our clients as part of a solution to this growing problem. The course takes learners through the process of setting up a remote workstation and helps them to establish whether further interventions are needed. By highlighting some of the issues and consequences that can result from different scenarios around home-setup, learners are given the information they need in an engaging and memorable format.

At the end of the course, learners are asked a series of questions to test their knowledge and provide the opportunity to request a further DSE assessment, either remote or in-person.

Benefits

The course has now been adopted by many of our clients and has been incredibly well received. In many cases it has become a key part of their health, safety and ergonomics strategy. We have supplied versions of the course in nine different languages ready for deployment around the world.

The content of the course can be tailored to match the specific practices and policies of any organisation, large or small. In addition, the course look and feel can be easily customised to represent the branding of the organisation. As such, we have had a number of clients adopt a version of this e-Learning course for themselves.

The course is fully SCORM compliant and therefore compatible with most industry standard Learning Management Systems (LMS). It also comes with options to increase the size of the text and change the colour theme between light and dark for the benefit of people with visual impairment.