Today’s modern office is striving to be a model of ergonomic perfection. Furniture and equipment that employees spend eight hours each day interacting with have become continually more important to employees’ well being. Where once employers viewed office employees as “worker bees”, they now are looked at differently due to the hidden cost of “maintaining” each employee. Employee time lost has many implications for the bottom-line and supervisors are as concerned about their employees health and well-being as they are about their productivity.
The ergonomic consulting industry is at the “tip of the spear” when it comes to controlling employee injury expenses. Companies large and small are retaining consultants to review and make recommendation about desks, chairs, monitor glare, keyboard angle, foot rests, mouse orientation, etc. etc. etc.
Chairs in particular are carefully reviewed. Sitting for long periods can have a debilitating effect on an office employee’s back and backs are the number one cost of workers’ compensation claims. It is not uncommon for an adjustable office chair to cost well over $1000. Sitting statically in one position for much of the time calls for a chair that supports the back perfectly. But what happens when an employee needs to move his/her chair frequently to get up and down? Or just in a different position in relation to their working surface?
The vast majority of office chairs must roll on inexpensive thin plastic or vinyl floor chair mats or desk pads. The common office chair mat is considered a supply item like pads and pencils. No one knows how many office chair mats are sold each year but the number must be staggering. If a floor chair mat is replaced every 12 to 24 months and there are 20,000,000 office workers and the average office chair mat costs $50, then office chair mats represent a $500 million business. Why is this important? Because the plastic or vinyl chair mat or desk pad is the least sophisticated ergonomic element of the modern office and businesses buy them by the truck load.
The obvious disconnect in office ergonomics is the fact that the most expensive and ergonomically perfect part of the office environment, the desk chair, depends on the least ergonomically considered office element, the office chair mat, to work its magic. Here is the conudrum. The ergonomic community of consultants and suppliers have never questioned the functionality of floor chair mats in the ergonomic equation. I believe the reason for this oversight is the belief that nothing can be done to make office chair mats better so why waste time thinking about it? The plastic floor chair mat is a necessary evil. One major office products company is so bold as to claim that its plastic floor chair mat “reduces repetitive stress injury.” So although plastic office chair mats don’t work particularly well, break up under the weight of that $1000 office chair rolling back and forth, and they look awful, it remains the best we can do. I ask you, “is that the thinking that got us to the moon?”
It would be unfair to say that nothing has been done to replace the plastic office chair mat. There are companies that offer bamboo and parquet wood desk pads. And even the White House has looked outside of the box to keep The President rolling in the oval office. Time magazine’s January 9, 2010 cover of President Obama sitting behind his desk clearly shows that he rolls on a thick piece of acrylic so that the beauty of his custom made oval office rug can show through! So is that all there is? Is that the best we can do?
A small California company, Clearly Innovative Home and Office Products, has taken on the challenge and has a patent pending on an office chair mat made of glass. The company boasts that their glass office chair mats “roll great, look great, and last forever”. A limited lifetime warranty promises to replace at no cost any glass floor chair mat that “cracks, splits, chips, or breaks” for the life of the product. Sounds like the last desk pad you will ever buy. Looks great and lasts forever are nice features but the ergonomic industry is concerned about stress free rolling. As this “clearly innovative” product starts appearing in Southern California offices here is what the ergonomic, health, and human resource industry is saying:
…The smooth hard glass chair mat surface allows the user to easily move and reposition their chair at their work area. Typically, employees use their lower extremities and/or their upper extremities to maneuver their chair around their work area and plastic floor mats increase the forces required to reposition a desk chair.
I believe glass chair mats are an important component of a proper office ergonomic set up.
Mark Nolte, MA, PT, CIE Certified Industrial Ergonomist
…The glass mats allow easy rolling of office chairs from one place to another, enabling our office staff to access multiple areas of the office without excessive low bod or low back effort and strain.
Lissa Tevino, President, PT, MPT, ATC – Ocean Physical Therapy
…One unexpected benefit has been an apparent reduction is lower back stress due to relaxing the spring tension on the tilt feature of the chairs. Because the chairs move so easily on these mats, it takes much less effort to move from place to place…
David L. Wantland SPHR-CA – Senior Director, Administration and Human Resources
I love my chairmat! It’s much easier to move my chair on, not like the flimsy vinyl ones. It is a great investment in the health of my back. If you suffer from back pain you need this product.
John Austin, Clearwater, Florida
It appears that glass office chair mats could be the missing piece of the ergonomically perfect office set-up puzzle. And this small company is not content with the status quo plastic floor chair mat, but instead is reaching for the moon and taking this type of repetitive strain injury off the table and out of the office for good. What’s next, cube shaped watermelons that store easier, oops, Japanese farmers have already figured that one out!
