Working safely from home

By Rustom Mody

Welcome to the latest edition of English that works: developing communication skills for everyday interactions. Thank you to those who responded to our survey from the last article. We received over a dozen in the first few hours!

Nowadays more and more people are working remotely. Although we may be happy to stay in the comfort of our own homes, we should remember that our workplaces have usually been designed specifically for work, unlike our homes. If you have to spend eight hours every day in front of a computer, long-term remote working may put a lot of physical and mental strain on you because you may not have the right setup, so here are some things to help!

1 Invest in peripherals, such as a computer monitor, keyboard, headset and mouse. These will enable you to look at a larger screen that is further away from your eyes and at the right height.

2 Set up an ergonomic workstation. This means arranging furniture and devices so that you can use them as efficiently and comfortably as possible. Find a chair with an upright back that supports you and put your computer on a
desk. It’s important for everything to be at the right level, so use cushions on the chair or put books under your screen to raise it. It might be tempting to lounge on your sofa while working on your laptop, but if you do this for hours on end every day, you may strain various muscles in your body.

3 In an office, we tend to move around a lot, whereas at home we stay stuck in front of our computers for hours at a time. So, don’t forget to take frequent breaks, even if it’s just a few seconds to stand up and stretch your joints.

4 Instead of sitting, try working at your computer while standing. Place your arms by your side and look for a surface that is level with your elbows. Put your laptop on it and spend some time standing and working. Changing your posture regularly will help avoid muscle strain.

5 If you have to attend long online meetings, join the meetings from your phone. You can then move around while listening instead of being rooted in one spot. I have a colleague who uses a pedometer to count the thousands of steps she completes each day during meetings!

6) Finally, if you are a team member, encourage your colleagues to improve their own workstations: to vary their postures and take regular breaks, so that your whole team can work from home as safely as possible.

Look at the words in bold. These are conjunctions. They can come at the start or middle of a sentence and enable us to combine two ideas into a single sentence, making our communication smoother. Use some of these conjunctions to let us know if you have any other tips for remote working, at [e-mail].