Your desk should be arranged to be at level with your chair’s armrests. Organize your work equipment in a parallel or symmetric manner to avoid unnecessary strain to one side of your body. The top edge of your computer monitor should be at level with your eyes so that you can maintain an upright seating position. The correct distance to a monitor is just as important in order to relax the eyes. At a minimum, a 24-inch monitor should be placed at a distance of 100 cm.
When using a keyboard, avoid bending your hands. Armrests can be a useful addition to prevent any injury to hands. An ergonomically designed keyboard is another solution to improve the posture of your arms and minimize neck or wrist pain. When using a mouse, hand posture is just as important: ideally, mouse and desk edge should be perpendicular.
Besides the correct posture, regular exercise and breaks are an important part of a well-designed ergonomic workstation. For each hour, it is advised to take a five-minute break to relax your eyes from the screen. Use your breaks to move and relax your body.
Lighting and acoustics can also have a significant effect on your health and are an important aspect that should not be forgotten when planning your ergonomic workspace. Too little light can tire the eyes. Day light is preferable to electric lights, which is why it is generally recommended to arrange a workspace in parallel to the window.
Make sure that your workspace is quiet. A high noise level could hinder concentration and increase your level of stress. Noisy devices such as printers and copiers should be placed into separate rooms. When arranging multiple desks in a large working area, an adequate distance between desks should be maintained to warrant plenty of elbowroom for each employee and avoid disruption because of co-workers chatting to one another. The right choice of furniture can help to minimize noise: carpets or soft vinyl floors isolate noise more effectively than harder floors; steel and glass can even reflect acoustic noise more so than wooden furniture.