microErgo: A Concept for an Ergonomic Self-Assessment Tool

Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WRD) have a high prevalence among office workers, which is even worsen with the current shift to home working office. Tools to assess their work setup in order to create awareness and reduce ergonomic risks are in need. There are tools available that allow ergonomic risk assessment to be carried out in a quantitative and qualitative way. However, quantitative tools require specialists’ collaboration, while qualitative tools do not provide a quantification of risk and do not consider other variables, such as social and psychosocial factors. In this sense, we introduce the concept of a self-assessment tool, named microErgo, that calculates the risk of developing pain or WRD based on ergonomic exposure for its prevention and promoting self-awareness. This tool’s construction requires an understanding and determination of the risk factors present in the office scenario. The risk associated with each factor must be considered and modeled by additional variables, such as individual characteristics or psychosocial. The final ergonomic risk is calculated by combining all sources of risk and transcribing it into a microErgo scale. microErgo is a concept to build an easy-to-use tool that combines existing ergonomic models with statistical data to calculate the risk of developing pain or WRD based on completing a self-assessment questionnaire and provide recommendations based on the risks identified.