Ergonomic Risk Factors of Teleworking in Ecuador during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Study

Larrea-Araujo, César; Ayala-Granja, José; Vinueza-Cabezas, Andrea; Acosta-Vargas, Patricia

doi:10.3390/ijerph18105063

Cited by 32 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Despite the comfort felt by some remote employees, specialists recommend a high level of compliance with certain rules related to ergonomics and time management [31,32]. For instance, companies such as Twitter and Google offer their employees a full-time telework schedule.…”

Section: Teleworking In the Eu In Times Of Covid-19 Pandemic-a Short Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Neural Networks in Order to Analyze Telework Adaptability across the European Union Countries: A Case Study of the Most Relevant Scenarios to Occur in Romania

Iordache

Dura

Coculescu

et al. 2021

IJERPH

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Our study addresses the issue of telework adoption by countries in the European Union and draws up a few feasible scenarios aimed at improving telework’s degree of adaptability in Romania. We employed the dataset from the 2020 Eurofound survey on Living, Working and COVID-19 (Round 2) in order to extract ten relevant determinants of teleworking on the basis of 24,123 valid answers provided by respondents aged 18 and over: the availability of work equipment; the degree of satisfaction with the experience of working from home; the risks related to potential contamination with SARS-CoV-2 virus; the employees’ openness to adhering to working-from-home patterns; the possibility of maintaining work–life balance objectives while teleworking; the level of satisfaction on the amount and the quality of work submitted, etc. Our methodology entailed the employment of SAS Enterprise Guide software to perform a cluster analysis resulting in a preliminary classification of the EU countries with respect to the degree that they have been able to adapt to telework. Further on, in order to refine this taxonomy, a multilayer perceptron neural network with ten input variables in the initial layer, six neurons in the intermediate layer, and three neurons in the final layer was successfully trained. The results of our research demonstrate the existence of significant disparities in terms of telework adaptability, such as: low to moderate levels of adaptability (detected in countries such as Greece, Croatia, Portugal, Spain, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Italy); fair levels of adaptability (encountered in France, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, or Romania); and high levels of adaptability (exhibited by intensely digitalized economies such Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, etc.).

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Section: Teleworking In the Eu In Times Of Covid-19 Pandemic-a Short Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Neural Networks in Order to Analyze Telework Adaptability across the European Union Countries: A Case Study of the Most Relevant Scenarios to Occur in Romania

Iordache

Dura

Coculescu

et al. 2021

IJERPH

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“…Indeed, since the onset of the pandemic, Canadians working from home reported that isolation from co-workers, limited access to work-related resources/information, unsuitable ergonomic arrangements, and technological limitations (e.g., software/hardware unavailability, slow internet speed) acted as barriers to their work-related well-being and productivity (9,24,28). These challenges were mirrored in other countries as well, along with technological limitations (29), communication challenges with co-workers (29)(30)(31) and managers/senior leaders (29), and unsuitable ergonomics (32)(33)(34). Employees also reported disruptions in work-life balance (29,(35)(36)(37)(38).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pandemic-Related Challenges and Organizational Support Among Personnel in Canada's Defense Establishment

Goldenberg

Denomme

Lee

2022

Front. Public Health

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In the final week of March 2020, 2.8 million Canadians were away from their usual places of work and engaging in remote and/or telework to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 (Statistics Canada, 2020). The Government of Canada's Department of National Defence (DND) and the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) were no exception, with most members from the regular force (Reg F), the primary reserve force (P Res), and the DND public service (DND PS) working from home. The COVID-19 Defence Team Survey was administered from April 29th, 2020, and May 22nd, 2020, to gain insight into work, health, and family-related challenges since the onset of the pandemic and change in work arrangements. Responses from five open-ended questions were qualitatively analyzed to determine general themes of concern regarding work, personal, and family related challenges, stress-management and coping strategies, and recommendations for improving the work situation and personal well-being. Given the different roles and conditions of employment, responses of the different groups or “components” of respondents (Reg F, P Res, DND PS) were compared to identify common and unique challenges to inform targeted organizational responses. A total of 26,207 members (Reg F = 13,668, 52.2%; P Res = 5,052, 19.3%; DND PS = 7,487, 28.6%) responded to the survey's five open-ended questions, which yielded a total of 75,000 open-ended responses. When asked about work-related challenges, respondents' most common challenges included dissatisfaction with technology/software, work arrangements, ergonomics, work-life balance, communication within the organization, and the uncertainties regarding career development. In terms of personal and/or family-related challenges, the most common challenges included social isolation, the impact of the pandemic on mental health, school closures and homeschooling, caring for vulnerable family members, and childcare concerns. The most common stress-management and coping strategies included exercise, spending time outdoors, communicating or spending time with family members, household chores/projects, mind-body wellness exercises, and playing games. The most common recommendations made by respondents to improve their work- or personal-related situations included improving technological capabilities, streamlining communication, providing hardware and software necessary to ensure comfortable ergonomics, the provision of flexibility in terms of telework schedules, return-to-work decisions, and the expansion of benefits and access to childcare services. In terms of differences among the components, DND PS personnel were most likely to report dissatisfaction with technological changes and ergonomics, and to recommend improving these technological limitations to maximize productivity. Reg F members, on the other hand, were most likely to recommend increased support and access to childcare, and both Reg F and P Res members were more likely to mention that increased benefits and entitlements in response to the COVID-19 pandemic would be ameliorative. The results of this study highlight several important facts about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on personnel working in large, diverse organizations. For example, advancements in organizational technological capabilities were highlighted herein, and these are likely to grow to maintain productivity should remote work come to be used more extensively in the long-term. This study also highlighted the importance of flexibility and accommodation in relation to individual needs – a trend that was already underway but has taken on greater relevance and urgency in light of the pandemic. This is clearly essential to the organization's role in supporting the well-being of personnel and their families. Clear and streamlined communication regarding organizational changes and support services is also essential to minimize uncertainty and to provide useful supports for coping with this and other stressful situations.

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“…On the other hand, working with a computer for many hours a day can cause injuries mainly to the spine, but also to the shoulders, neck, arms and/or wrists; those injuries are usually caused by incorrect postures in front of the computer. These problems are documented in multiple studies [ 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ] and reveal the need to maintain good postural hygiene to avoid these injuries. Moreover, the probability of adopting wrong postures increases when most of the latest teleworkers have never worked this way before.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Deep-Learning Based Posture Detection System for Preventing Telework-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders

Piñero-Fuentes

Canas-Moreno

Ríos-Navarro

et al. 2021

Sensors

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The change from face-to-face work to teleworking caused by the pandemic has induced multiple workers to spend more time than usual in front of a computer; in addition, the sudden installation of workstations in homes means that not all of them meet the necessary characteristics for the worker to be able to position himself/herself comfortably with the correct posture in front of their computer. Furthermore, from the point of view of the medical personnel in charge of occupational risk prevention, an automated tool able to quantify the degree of incorrectness of a postural habit in a worker is needed. For this purpose, in this work, a system based on the postural detection of the worker is designed, implemented and tested, using a specialized hardware system that processes video in real time through convolutional neural networks. This system is capable of detecting the posture of the neck, shoulders and arms, providing recommendations to the worker in order to prevent possible health problems, due to poor posture. The results of the proposed system show that this video processing can be carried out in real time (up to 25 processed frames/sec) with a low power consumption (less than 10 watts) using specialized hardware, obtaining an accuracy of over 80% in terms of the pattern detected.

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Ergonomic Risk Factors of Teleworking in Ecuador during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Study

Cited by 32 publications

References 12 publications

Using Neural Networks in Order to Analyze Telework Adaptability across the European Union Countries: A Case Study of the Most Relevant Scenarios to Occur in Romania

Using Neural Networks in Order to Analyze Telework Adaptability across the European Union Countries: A Case Study of the Most Relevant Scenarios to Occur in Romania

Pandemic-Related Challenges and Organizational Support Among Personnel in Canada's Defense Establishment

A Deep-Learning Based Posture Detection System for Preventing Telework-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders

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