2007, Piran, Slovenia

Environmental Ergonomics XII
Igor B. Mekjavic, Stelios N. Kounalakis & Nigel A.S. Taylor (Eds.), © BIOMED, Ljubljana 2007
534
ENVIRONMENTAL ERGONOMICS ANALYSIS FOR THE
ADMINISTRATIVE WORK-PLACE.
Costela Ardelean 1 , Denis Mihai Serban 2 and Anca Draghici 3
1 County Hospital of Timisoara, Romania,
2 Victor Babes University of Medicine and Pharmacy Timisoara, Romania,
3 Politehnica University of Timisoara, Romania
Contact person: adraghici@eng.upt.ro
INTRODUCTION
With the development of the technologies of information and communication the
administrative type working systems suffered a lot of transformations. Postural stress and the
predominant intellectual work of human operator changed in content and intensity. Therefore,
the periodic ergonomic analysis of these working systems must be performed for ergonomic
optimization of environment, identifying factors for organization optimization for the working
places, identifying occupational diseases or new causes of premature fatigue, and for
increasing productivity of work simultaneously with increasing work safety. This is the focus
of this presentation.
The bibliographic analysis and direct observation of human operator’s fatigue from the
administrative field, the ergonomic organizing type of office work and the analysis of some
psychological and physiological aspects of office work are the first objective of our research.
We investigated the following aspects: (1) Work fatigue and solicitation factors: type of
fatigue, determination of physical fatigue, the fatigue prevention, rest and work capacity; (2)
The ergonomic organization of working place: the phase of the process, some principles that
must be followed, the need of office work optimization and the effects on the health of the
human operators; and (3) Identifying some specific elements for the increasing safety of
workplaces in order to perform the analysis of some psychological and physiological aspects
of office work. These preliminary aspects of research formed the basis of this research.
METHODS
Three methods were used: (1) Direct observation of administrative working places using
observation charts. The elements of interest were: describing the organization for the working
place, description of postural stress, and description of working environment. (2) Dialogue
with a focus group with the purpose of collecting data for the effects on health of stress and
working posture. (3) A direct semi-structured interview based on a questionnaire for the
identifying the perturbing factors in administrative work. The sample was 25 public officers,
working 8 hours/day and 5 days/week.
RESULTS
As a result of the analysis of the data gathered with different investigation methods we must
conclude the following that: (1) Background noise consisted of: telephones ringing, telephone
conversations, office conversation between officers and the public, movement inside the
office, opening and closing of the door had the highest importance in causing fatigue (25 of
25 public officers). (2) Inadequate light (low intensity light on the desk, lighting source not
placed on the left) was the cause of trouble for 12 of the 25 officers. (3) The primary cause of
back pain was an inadequate chair for 21 officers. (4) Ten of the 25 officers were unhappy
with the quality of inside air (hot summer days the air is irrespirable, office over-populated,
ventilation systems are not sufficient). (5) Physical and moral violence is another reason of
concern for 16 employers, who were concerned because the public frequently used verbal
violence. These aspects are presented in Figures 1 and 2.