Ergonomics 101 – a webinar with Professor Alan Hedge

This week Humanscale is hosting Designing Comfort: The Art and Ergonomics of Seating, a livestreamed discussion, with Alan Hedge exploring the ways to combat common posture mistakes, including hunched ‘shrimp’ sitting, and their effects on muscle fatigue, breathing, circulation and musculoskeletal strain.

I’m going to be honest here. When you’ve been working in a certain field of journalism for long enough, eventually the memories of many, if not all, of the interviewees you speak with start to blur a little and fade into the background. And this only makes the really memorable ones stand out in greater relief.

I interviewed Professor Alan Hedge back in 2018 and I’ve never forgotten it. A wonderfully informed, but also warmly engaging speaker, he makes the topic of ergonomics an absolutely fascinating one. I could listen to his explanations of musculoskeletal issues and how they can be exacerbated by an ill-suited working environment all day.

“Stress doesn’t cause musculoskeletal problems, but it does amplify them, because it tenses up the muscles, so that when a stressed employee is working in a poor posture, they become injured more quickly,” he said in that interview eight years ago.

Hands up if that resonated with you straightaway…

Well, there’s some good news for all those of you with your an arm lifted skywards (and I hope you didn’t feel a twinge in your shoulder as you did it). This Wednesday there’s an opportunity to listen to the venerable Professor yourself.

*Professor Alan Hedge. Photo: Supplied.*

Livestreamed webinar

On Wednesday 13 May he’ll be talking to Amanda Schembri, Humanscale’s A+D director for Australia and New Zealand, in a livestreamed webinar, entitled Designing Comfort: The Art and Ergonomics of Seating.

Humanscale, the promoter of the event, explains that the chat will look into the science of sitting and explore how it shapes health, comfort and performance in the workplace.

The promotional material adds that Hedge is generally considered the world’s preeminent ergonomist, a man who was described by a former President of the International Ergonomics Association as “the most frequently cited ergonomist in the media”. He has spent over 30 years as Professor at Cornell University heading the Ergonomics program, and has served as the Chair of the Organizational Design and Management Technical Group of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.

His expertise has shaped NASA’s workspace design for astronauts as well as that of Fortune 500 companies and global policymakers. He has been featured in media around the world, including the BBC, The Wall Street Journal, CNN and TIME Magazine.

I mean, that’s all very interesting background information but, to be honest, they had me at ‘Hedge’…