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WHAT’S NEW? THE EDITOR REVIEWS: WORKFIT-T by Ergotron


Pros: • No assembly required


• Infinite position lock (up to 38cm) • Extremely sturdy and robust • Practical to use/Easy to adjust • Plenty of space including the keyboard holder


Cons: • No keyboard holder adjustment


• Very heavy (two-person lift required)


Background With the world of work undergoing a period a radical change, and as the pandemic sees more of the UK population working from home, it’s no surprise that the Institute of Employment Studies recently revealed more than half of those now working at home are reporting an increase in new aches and pains including, neck, shoulder and back problems.


Sedentary lifestyles have become somewhat the norm since the information age took off, with the average worker spending more than five and a half hours sat at their desk and around seven hours sleeping at night. This all comes with a significant cost to long-term health.


Numerous studies have looked at the various ways in which sedentary behaviours not only affect employee productivity but also place a burden on health services. Queen’s University Belfast and Ulster University’s recent study into the financial impact of a sedentary lifestyle on the NHS, found that it contributed to nearly 70,000 deaths in the UK in 2016, and 11.6% of all fatalities were associated with sedentary behaviour.


In a bid to get on top of these challenges, medical professionals now promote a ‘sit-stand-switch’ philosophy, whereby workers alternate between sitting and standing every 30 minutes. On average you burn around 30% more calories per hour stood up than you do sat down, which can have a host of positive benefits on your health. Research also suggests that, because moving your body around pumps blood and oxygen to the brain, employees who adopt a more kinetic approach to work are likely to report an improvement in mood over the medium to long term.


That’s where companies such as Ergotron, an ergonomics and movement specialist, step-up (pun intended) to the occasion. Ergotron focus on designing and manufacturing kinetic work environments so people can thrive during work. I had the chance to review the company’s WorkFit-T, a sit-stand desktop converter, that transformed my workspace at home into a more agile, practical and movement-friendly set-up.


The review The WorkFit-T is a desk converter. It sits on top of your desk and transforms it into a flexible sit-stand workstation. The solution offers 38cm of height


18 | TOMORROW’S FM


adjustment and fits within the dimensions of your existing work surface, meaning no additional space in the room is required. The unit is very well put together; no tools, no loose parts, it transforms your workspace, wherever that may be, and provides the user with more control over how they go about their work, allowing them to be more productive, efficient and comfortable.


It took roughly five minutes to set up, four minutes of which was an attempt to get it out of the box by myself, so this is perhaps a damning indictment of the editor’s lack of friends rather than a critique of the product’s set-up time. You simply take it out of its box, cut off the protective covering, lift it onto your desk and it’s good to go. It is a weighty product (22.3kg), and therefore requires two people to get it up any stairs if necessary and also to lift it onto the desk safely, so if you’re living alone during lockdown, this is definitely something worth noting.


“Medical professionals now promote a ‘sit-stand-switch’


philosophy, whereby workers alternate between sitting and standing every 30 minutes.”


With a compact, monochrome design the WorkFit-T would look the part even in the most contemporary of offices or workspaces. It fit well on my desk at home and doesn’t look out of place in my bedroom that has, since lockdown, become a makeshift office. Impressively, I feel as though it would look good in any work setting, and there’s absolutely no reason why it wouldn’t suit the interiors of an office in the same way it does my rather small bedroom, providing you have a sufficiently sized desk to put it on.


There is ample space on the workstation itself with a footprint of 89 x 59cm. I was able to place my standing monitor on the left-hand side, with plenty of additional space for my laptop, notepads, magazine proofs and stationery on the right-hand side.


When adjusting the desk, you simply pull both levers at either side and it glides quickly and smoothly up and down without a sound, locking into any position up to a maximum height of 38cm. The monitor platform and keyboard tray move in unison but unfortunately, you cannot move the tray itself, which at times, particularly if I was working on my laptop, could be a little frustrating. Despite this however, I found that when sat down, my Microsoft Surface laptop (which is a medium sized piece of kit) would fit almost perfectly in the keyboard holder, so it very rarely became a problem. It also feels somewhat unjust to criticise the product for this, because they are predominately built for


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