By Stephen Bowden – Chartered Ergonomist
Our first nine months of life are spent in the womb during which time gravity, the force that attracts our bodies towards the centre of the earth, is already influencing our growth. This influence becomes more obvious once we are born and the development of our innate ability as humans to stand upright commences.
By Stephen Bowden – Chartered Ergonomist
Cars, trains, planes, mobile phones, desktop computers, tablet computers, mobile phone applications, online food delivery companies, comfortable ‘ergonomic’ chairs, escalators and lifts, modern offices are just a few examples of technology/designs that reduce the amount of movement the human body makes on a day to day basis. There is no argument that the above list of modern technology improves our productivity but at what cost to our health and wellbeing?
By Stephen Bowden – Chartered Ergonomist
After reading the title of this blog post you may be asking yourself, ‘What has Ergonomics go to do with Wellbeing?’ This question may be followed by ‘What is Ergonomics?’, but maybe the most important question should be ‘How does Ergonomics improve Productivity?’
In a globalised economy with ever more competitive business environments, organisations need to find the edge to improve productivity. In this context, this blog post looks at the relationship between ergonomics, wellbeing and productivity.
As part of Fellowes’ ongoing campaign to boost workplace wellbeing, we’ve teamed up with psychologist Kevin Tobin to help you understand the factors that can help you identify and manage stress.
We all know that when we’re stressed for a long period of time it starts to affect our wellbeing. We feel we can’t cope, life starts to feel heavy and even our bodies can start to suffer with symptoms.
Research shows us that short periods of intense pressure can be coped with and can even be productive.
However, if this perceived external pressure continues for too long (and this is different for us all and at different times for us all), we will experience negative health and reduced coping.
The good news is that with positive thinking and healthy strategies, we can build our resilience and ability to manage stress.
One of the big trends in cognitive psychology at the moment is ‘mindfulness based cognitive therapy’. This is based on the practice of mindfulness meditation as practiced by Buddhists over thousands of years. It can seem that this is or would be a really soft side of what might be in your toolkit for the management of stress.
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