The workstation that stops hurting your back

At the end of the day, tiredness doesn't always come from the work itself. It often comes from a chair set too low, a badly placed screen, a work surface that forces the shoulders up. The body absorbs it in silence, then speaks up in the neck and the lower back.

Setting up an office workstation is not just about choosing a nice chair. It is a system: the furniture, the screen and the rhythm of the day have to work together. That coherence is what separates a healthy workstation from a pile of objects.

A system, not a collection of objects

The most common mistake is to reason accessory by accessory: a cushion here, a wrist rest there. Yet posture is decided at the scale of the whole workstation. Adjusting the chair correctly is useless if the work surface pushes the shoulders up, and a fine but poorly angled screen tires the neck all day long.

• The chair sets the relationship between hips, legs and floor.
• The work surface determines the height of forearms and shoulders.
• The screen fixes the orientation of the head and neck.
• The rhythm of the day decides how long each posture lasts.

Defining the ergonomic equipment of a workstation

People often treat ergonomic equipment as a list of accessories. The useful view is broader: the ergonomic equipment of a workstation is the set of adjustable elements that fit the workstation to the body, not the other way around. Three families structure the whole: an adjustable chair, a work surface at the right height (ideally sit-stand) and a monitor support that brings the eyes to the correct level.

The rest — footrest, support arm, task lighting — completes this base, but never replaces it. A workstation full of gadgets without adjustable furniture remains a bad workstation.

Adjust before you buy: the verified benchmarks

Before investing, you need to aim correctly. The benchmarks published by SECO and the CFST (EKAS) come down to a few simple principles, to be checked workstation by workstation. The work surface sits around 72 cm when seated, but what matters is the posture achieved, not the number itself.

Alternating sitting and standing: the real lever

No posture is good if you hold it too long. The sit-stand desk is not a luxury: it lets you change position during the day, which relieves the spine and gets the circulation going. The point is not to work standing all day, but to switch regularly, several times a day.

What Swiss law says

In Switzerland, ergonomics is not optional. Ordinance 3 to the Labour Act (OLT 3 / ArGV 3) requires the employer to arrange workstations according to ergonomic principles, taking the state of the art into account. The workstation must allow a natural posture and, where possible, seated or alternately seated and standing work.

A good workstation goes unnoticed: it simply doesn't hurt.

Investing right, across a whole floor

At company scale, equipment is planned in coherent batches rather than one item at a time. A good adjustable chair and a sit-stand surface cost more upfront, but they cut discomfort, absences and the rejection of unloved desks. The useful question is not the unit price, but the cost of a workstation nobody wants to use.

• Standardise a few adjustable models rather than multiplying references.
• Plan training on adjustment: a good chair set up wrong is useless.
• Involve a specialist in case of doubt, as OLT 3 provides.
• Reassess the workstations after a few weeks of real use.