Workplace wellness | EPFL Graph Search

Workplace wellness, also known as corporate wellbeing outside the United States, is a broad term used to describe activities, programs, and/or organizational policies designed to support healthy behavior in the workplace. This often involves health education, medical screenings, weight management programs, and onsite fitness programs or facilities. Recent developments in wearable health technology have led to a rise in self-tracking devices as workplace wellness. Other common examples of workplace wellness organizational policies include allowing flex-time for exercise, providing onsite kitchen and eating areas, offering healthy food options in vending machines, holding "walk and talk" meetings, and offering financial and other incentives for participation. Over time, workplace wellness has expanded from single health promotion interventions to describe a larger project intended to create a healthier working environment. Companies most commonly subsidize workplace wellness programs in the hope they will reduce costs on employee health benefits like health insurance in the long run. Although the academic debate is still unsettled, existing research has failed to establish a clinically significant difference in health outcomes, prove a return on investment, or demonstrate causal effects of treatments. The largest benefits have been observed in groups that were already attempting to manage health concerns, which indicates a strong possibility of selection bias. Additionally, this rationale has been critiqued for conflating productivity with physical and emotional wellbeing and prioritizing profit-centric measures over genuine attempts to create a healthy workplace environment. Wellness programs originated in the early 1900s, as labor unions fought for workers' rights and as employers saw the advantages of having a vital, alert, and rested workforce. A few key manufacturers invested in programs to keep their employees healthy and productive.

Biomechanics at the workplace under hypogravity conditions

Tatiana Maillard

The main goal of my research is to establish guidelines for workplace design based on human biomechanics: specifically sitting workplaces and handling areas in 1/6G-1/3G (Moon, Mars) conditions. Such a workplace could be used in long-term space missions in order to maximize worker performance and minimize the risks of musculoskeletal injuries.Research objective is to formalize a baseline workplace design based on best practices limited to the tasks: operating a computer, assembling/maintenance operations.Proposed steps:1) Data collection and methods definitions2) Measurement and simulation of the human fatigue in the variation of sitting postures and handling areas (identification of typical poses, 3D simulation, graph analysis)3) Optimization of the workplace design based on human biomechanics (motion capture, factor analysis, optimization) 4) Simulation of workplace design in different environments (validation methods).Scientific & technological novelty: 1) Measurement of human muscular fatigue as a function of workload in reduced gravity conditions and integration of the results into the design model2) Modeling of the biomechanics of human movements in the workplace in reduced gravity conditions;3) Developing of sitting workplace design in reduced gravity conditions - taking into account human biomechanics.This research addresses problems revealed by workplace design in confined conditions found in Earth or near-Earth facilities in extreme environments including in underwater conditions, remote & non-remote locations and Low Earth Orbit (LEO), habitat simulators. Human-centered design strategies and biomechanics issues for creating an effective workplace design for long-term missions will also be addressed. The recommendations for design, maintenance, and usage of this workplace in different gravity conditions (1G, 1/6G,1/3G) will be provided. The design optimization of such a workplaces design based on human biomechanics will be done with the help of numerical simulations and digital human modeling. Physical experiments will validate these results by means of the suspension system, underwater experiment and possible by parabolic flights. This work may have a significant impact on workplace designs for both Earth and Space projects. Keywords: biomechanics, workplace, posture, extreme environments, human-centered design, Moon/Mars exploration, comfort conditions, task performance, reduced gravity, digital human modeling, motion capture

EPFL2022

Biomechanics at the workplace under hypogravity conditions

Tatiana Maillard

EPFL2022