Office Tasks Research Articles

Effects on variation in shoulder, forearm and low back muscle activity from combining seated computer work with other productive office tasks: results from a simulation study

The effect on muscle activity variation of combining different office tasks is not known. We recorded electromyography from the upper trapezius (UT), wrist extensor (WE) and lumbar erector spinae (LES) in 24 office workers during five productive tasks, and breaks. Minute-to-minute variance was then estimated, by simulations, in a reference ‘job’ consisting of 85% sitting computer work and 15% breaks, and in ‘jobs’ where sitting computer work was replaced by different proportions of the other office tasks and breaks. Replacing sitting computer work with sitting non-computer work increased estimated variance by, in median, 23% (UT), 19% (WE) and 0% (LES). Replacing it with other tasks, in particular, standing computer work and non-desk work, was less effective in increasing variance. Thus, some combinations of office tasks have a slight potential to increase muscle activity variation in the shoulder and lower arm, but not the lumbar back, while others will be ineffective. Practitioner summary: The need for exposure variation is often emphasised in office ergonomics. We estimated the effect on muscle activity in the shoulder, forearm and lumbar back of combining sitting computer work with other available tasks and breaks, finding that introduction of sitting non-computer tasks and non-desk work slightly increased variation; other tasks were essentially non-effective.

Visual Commands for Control of Food Assistance Robot

Assistance robots improve people's quality of life in residential and office tasks, especially for people with physical limitations. In the case of the elderly or people with upper limb motor disabilities, an assistance robot for food support is necessary. This development is based on a mixed environment, a real and virtual environment working interactively. A camera located in front of the user is used, at a distance of 60 cm, so that it has an excellent visual range to capture the user's hand gestures for the commands. Pattern recognition based on a deep learning algorithm is made with convolutional neural networks to identify the user's hand gestures. This work exposes the network's training and the results of the robot command's execution. A virtual environment is presented in which a robotic arm with a spoon-like effector is used in a machine vision system that allows eight different types of commands to be recognized for the robot by training a faster R-CNN network for which a database of 640 images is used, achieving a degree of system performance of over 95%. The average time in the execution of a cycle from detecting and identify the command gesture to move the robot towards the food and return in front of the user is 21 seconds, making the development useful for real-time applications.

The Role of Leadership In Improving Employee Discipline

Discipline is very important because discipline plays a role in creating disciplined and productive employees. Discipline means carrying out its responsibilities in accordance with office regulations, thus employees will become more productive and able to work effectively and efficiently. One of the factors that affect the discipline of work is the example of the leader, the example of the leader is very instrumental in determining the discipline of employees, because the leadership is used as an example and role model by his subordinates. The purpose of this study was to analyze the influence of leadership on work discipline. This research was included in associative-quantitative research, which was research that connects two or more variables to see the influence between variables through hypothesis testing. In this study, researcher gave five alternative answers to respondents using a scale of one to five. The population in this study was employees at the Office of Cooperatives, Small and Medium Enterprises, Industry and Trade of North Tapanulli Regency as many as 30 people under the leadership of echelon 3. The R Square value of 0.744 means that 7.44% of employee work disciplinary variables (Y) can be explained by leadership (X). While the remaining 25.6% can be explained by other variables that were not studied in this study. Based on the results of the analysis of this study where the leadership plays a role in the discipline of employees' work, this is because good leadership is one of the important factors in the process of disciplining employees' work. Leadership can affect employee discipline and result in the form of work requirements that employees will carry out. If the leadership in the company or organization is good and has the ability to influence or control its employees in carrying out office tasks then the work discipline will be improved as expected by the company.

The Impact of Psychological Climate and Self-Resilience on Employee Performance During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Empirical Study in Indonesia

The study aims to investigate the impact of psychological climate, self-resilience, Organizational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB) and job stress on employee performance during Covid-19 pandemic. This paper also attempts to find out the mediating role of OCB and job stress in this context. A confirmatory survey was conducted on 316 employees of several institutions in Indonesia who worked from home during Covid-19 for a minimum period of 2 months. The research revealed that 1) PC has significant and positive influence on OCB and performance;2) Self resilience have positive and significant influence on performance;3) PC and self-resilience have a negative influence on job stress;4) there are insignificant relationship between self-resilience on OCB;OCB and job stress on performance;5) PC and self-resilience have no indirect influence on performance through OCB and job stress. The findings of this study reveal that organizations expected to have strategic approach in order to handle Covid-19 pandemic in different work patterns that are required to carry out routine office tasks from home, including handling stress as a fast adaptation for both employees and organizations that have a routine task from home.

Management Analysis of Pandemic Covid-19 in Kepung, Kediri Districts

Pandemic is a recurring event that causes a global recession and threatens human security. The Covid-19 pandemic in Indonesia is predicted to have very high morbidity and mortality rate. The strategy has been implemented but the case is still high, so it needs to be evaluated of the management factor from task force and community health center. The research method used is descriptive qualitative, with purposive sampling and indeep interview of 16 main informants and 2 triangulation informants. The research results from the input aspect of man and money are sufficient, lack of material becouse of regulations, budgets, stock and information that cause negative stigma and inadequate movement of task force and inadequate mentoring methods due to weak coordination. The planning aspects consider community input (batoom up), fulfillment of guidelines and instructions from the health office or district task force (top down) with a system of changes to the Financial Budget. The conclusion is that the preventive and promotive roles of community health center management and task forces are not maximal in efforts to deal with a pandemic becouse of limited inputs and constraints in organization and implementation.

Towards Participant-Independent Stress Detection Using Instrumented Peripherals

Methods to measure work stress generally rely on subjective measures from questionnaires or require dedicated sensors that are cumbersome to wear and interfere with the task. To address this problem, we propose a method to detect stress unobtrusively using commodity devices (keyboards, mice) instrumented with pressure sensors. We propose a minimalist design that can be easily replicated by other researchers using off-the-shelf and low-cost hardware. We validate the design in a laboratory experiment that simulates office tasks and mild stressors while avoiding methodological limitations of previous studies. We compare stress-detection performance when using conventional features reported in the literature (keystroke dynamics, mouse trajectories) augmented with information from pressure sensors. Our results indicate that pressure provides additional information for stress discrimination; adding pressure information to keystroke dynamics and mouse trajectories improves classification performance by 6% and 3%, respectively. These results show how devices that are already part of the modern workplace may be used and enhanced to automatically and unobtrusively detect stress.

Improvement of the Working Environment and Daily Work-Related Tasks of Dental Hygienists Working in Private Dental Offices from the Japan Dental Hygienists' Association Survey 2019.

A dental hygienist performs various daily work-related tasks. The aim of this study was to elucidate the daily work-related tasks of Japanese dental hygienists and construct groups to understand the relationships between daily work-related tasks, the attractiveness of dental hygienist work, and the improvement of the working environment. The Japan Dental Hygienists’ Association has conducted a postal survey on the employment status of dental hygienists in Japan every five years since 1981. The data on the implementation of 74 daily work-related tasks in dental offices were analyzed from the survey carried out in 2019. The questionnaires were distributed to 16,722 dental hygienists and 8932 were returned (collection rate: 53.4%). The 3796 dental hygienists working at dental clinics were clearly classified into nine groups. Full-time workers requested a reduced workload. Part-time workers requested better treatment rather than reducing the workload. Salary and human relationships were common problems with the working environment. Full-time workers felt that job security was an attractive feature of the dental hygienist role. The data presented in this study may help with the improvement of working conditions for dental hygienists.

Concurrent and discriminant validity of ActiGraph waist and wrist cut-points to measure sedentary behaviour, activity level, and posture in office work

BackgroundSedentary Behaviour (SB) gets an increasing attention from ergonomics and public health due to its associated detrimental health effects. A large number of studies record SB with ActiGraph counts-per-minute cut-points, but we still lack valid information about what the cut-points tell us about office work. This study therefore analysed the concurrent and discriminant validity of commonly used cut-points to measure SB, activity level, and posture.MethodsThirty office workers completed four office tasks at three workplaces (conventional chair, activity-promoting chair, and standing desk) while wearing two ActiGraphs (waist and wrist). Indirect calorimetry and prescribed posture served as reference criteria. Generalized Estimation Equations analysed workplace and task effects on the activity level and counts-per-minute, and kappa statistics and ROC curves analysed the cut-point validity.ResultsThe activity-promoting chair (p < 0.001, ES ≥ 0.66) but not the standing desk (p = 1.0) increased the activity level, and both these workplaces increased the waist (p ≤ 0.003, ES ≥ 0.63) but not the wrist counts-per-minute (p = 0.74) compared to the conventional chair. The concurrent and discriminant validity was higher for activity level (kappa: 0.52–0.56 and 0.38–0.45, respectively) than for SB and posture (kappa ≤0.35 and ≤ 0.19, respectively). Furthermore, the discriminant validity for activity level was higher for task effects (kappa: 0.42–0.48) than for workplace effects (0.13–0.24).ConclusionsActiGraph counts-per-minute for waist and wrist placement were – independently of the chosen cut-point – a measure for activity level and not for SB or posture, and the cut-points performed better to detect task effects than workplace effects. Waist cut-points were most valid to measure the activity level in conventional seated office work, but they showed severe limitations for sit-stand desks. None of the placements was valid to detect the increased activity on the activity-promoting chair. Caution should therefore be paid when analysing the effect of workplace interventions on activity level with ActiGraph waist and wrist cut-points.

User discomfort while using a virtual reality headset as a personal viewing system for text-intensive office tasks

Ergonomics issues while using virtual reality (VR) headsets for text-intensive applications have not been studied. Measures of neck and shoulder discomfort and simulator sickness symptoms were quantified while participants were performing a document creation task for 60 min using a VR headset and a desktop monitor. During the task with the headset, participants rotated the head 2.7 times more frequently and used the neck extensor muscles 25.9% more, in average. They also rated the neck and shoulder discomfort 60% and 17.5% higher after the task. The simulator sickness symptoms were also rated significantly higher (p < .05) for the headset condition, with more pronounced differences in the symptoms related to visual discomfort. Results indicate that the physical discomforts due to the frequent head rotations and the headset weight, and visual discomforts due to difficulty in reading texts were the main issues of the VR headset for common office tasks. Practitioner summary: Ergonomics issues associated with the use of a VR headset for conducting office productivity work tasks have been evaluated in an experiment. Study results indicate that the development in the neck physical discomfort and visual discomfort may be the main barriers to the use of current VR headsets for office works. Abbreviations: VR: virtual reality; VDT: video display terminal; EMG: electromyography; MVC: maximum voluntary contraction; SSQ: simulator sickness questionnaire; ECG: electrocardiogram; NEMG: normalised electromyography

Experimental investigations and computational thermal simulation on human thermal comfort during performing office tasks

Thermal have significantly impact the productivity of work as well as the occupants’ satisfaction to their surroundings. The objective of this study is to evaluate the implication of thermal environmental conditions to human/manikin in a ventilated air conditioning space using CFD simulations. The thermal distributions of environmental parameters, which were air velocity, air temperature, radiant temperature, inside an office room with air-conditioning system were simulated. The design of experimental study was utilised through the controlled conditions based on the real laboratory studies and real case studies which were later on utilised as the external validity of the field studies. The model of the office environment has been built in the ANSYS Engineering simulation software. The thermal distributions, spatial profiles of PMV are obtained to illustrate thermal conditions intuitively. The distribution of PMV indicated that operative temperature at the 23 °C shows that the PMV is at the level of comfort. Meanwhile the value of PMV for the operative temperature at 23 °C is at 0.79 near the skin of manikin. The research outputs provide useful information for engineers especially in designing air-conditioning system in order to design and build a comfortable indoor environment climate especially in the office environment.

The role of the Project Management Office in Sustainable Project Management

Abstract The transition towards more sustainable business practices requires the changing of products, services, processes, policies and resources of organizations. Acknowledging the role projects play in these change, the concepts of sustainability should be integrated in the way projects are planned, organized, executed, managed and governed. This sustainability perspective evolved into the concept of Sustainable Project Management, which is considered one of the most important global project management trends today. Within organizations, the project management office plays a leading role in the standards, methods and practices of project management. However, the role of the PMO in sustainable project management is still unexplored. This paper explores how sustainable project management impacts the responsibilities and tasks of a PMO. Based on an analysis of relevant literature, a list of responsibilities and tasks of a project management office is developed. The study shows that a PMO can play an key-enabling role in the sustainability of projects and project management and thereby in the transition of organizations towards more sustainable business practices.

Задачи деятельности прокуратуры Российской Федерации

In this article, the authors made an attempt, based on an analysis of scientific literature, domestic and foreign legislation, to consider the main tasks of the activities of the prosecutor's office of the Russian Federation. In addition, a possible classification of the tasks of the Russian prosecutor's office is given

RPA and Artificial Intelligence in Budget Management Based on Multiperspective Recognition Based on Network Communication Integration

Nowadays, RPA robots are increasingly used in daily office tasks such as finance and human resources. They play an increasingly important role in realizing office automation, which can improve work efficiency and reduce labor costs. In order to improve the efficiency of budget management and save human resources, this paper conducts related research based on the multiview recognition technology of network communication integration, combined with RPA in artificial intelligence technology. In the method part, this article introduces the mode of network communication integration and the principles that should be followed, as well as the related processes of RPA. In the algorithm, this paper introduces an integrated algorithm based on ELM. In the experimental part, this article predicts the performance of each model, compares identification functions with different signal‐to‐voice signals, and compares timing functions on different signal‐to‐voice signals, periodic transmission mode indicators, recognition rates of different kernel functions, and comparison of average recognition rates and multiview recognition rate comprehensive analysis of these multiple aspects. Under the same conditions, the recognition rate of some angles is lower than other angles; 0 degrees, 18 degrees, 126 degrees, and 180 degrees are slightly lower than other angles, which will affect the average recognition rate of the entire recognition. But for multiview gait features, considering the influence of each angle on the recognition rate, the characteristics of each angle are merged together, so that the recognition rate is significantly higher than the average recognition rate of 11 angles. It can be seen that multiview recognition based on network communication integration does have obvious effects on RPA and artificial intelligence in budget management and can improve the efficiency of budget management. The multiperspective recognition technology designed in this study can realize modernization and digitization in budget management.

Professional culture forming process by penal system students (pedagogical, psychological and environmental aspects)

The penitentiary system puts forward special requirements for students and to the level of their professional culture. The specificity of penal system imposes the fulfillment of certain specific tasks on cadets. It determines the main directions of formation of a students’ professional culture. The current state and development of penitentiary system of Russian Federation dictates the need for future specialists to master a complex of certain knowledge, skills and abilities that allow them to effectively fulfill office tasks. The peculiarity of conditions of activity of penal system employees is also associated with the fact that they constantly have to deal with persons associated with criminal activity. In the process of penal system employees training, emphasis is placed on the development of professional, spiritual, moral and cultural values. The key condition for achieving law and order in society and institutions of penitentiary system and reducing social tension is the organization of process of forming the professional culture of students in the penitentiary sphere.

Effects of two types of dynamic office workstations (DOWs) used at two intensities on cognitive performance and office work in tasks with various complexity

This study examines the possible effects on objective work performance while using two types of dynamic office workstations (DOWs). 20 participants each used one type with three intensities (seated, light, moderate) and completed a task battery assessing cognitive performance and office work with two levels of complexity. Repeated measures MANOVA showed a significant interaction effect for work performance between the type of workstation and intensity for the simple level and a significant main effect for intensity for the complex level. Comparing the types of DOWs to each other, accuracy of text processing differed when working sedentary. Using both devices with light and moderate intensity had a significant detrimental effect on mouse tasks compared to working sedentary, but none comparing the intensities. No further results indicated neither a detrimental nor an enhancing effect of using DOWs on cognitive performance and office-work related tasks, regardless of the intensity of use or the task complexity. Practitioner Summary: By using DOWs, light physical activity can be integrated while working at a desk. Results showed that using different types of DOWs with different intensities does have a detrimental effect on tasks requiring a high motor control, but not on cognitive or further office work-related tasks of various complexity. Abbreviations: DOW: dynamic office workstation; aLT: activeLife Trainer; DB: deskbike; RPE: rated perceived exertion; MANOVA: multivariate analysis of variance; ANOVA: analysis of variance

Experimental assessment of thermal sensation and thermal comfort of sedentary subjects: a scoping review protocol

Thermal comfort affects satisfaction in the workplace, which impacts work efficiency and productivity. Since office workers spend most of their working hours performing sedentary tasks, a scoping review is proposed to contextualize how thermal sensation and thermal comfort are experimentally assessed in the scientific literature. This work presents the scoping review protocol for the scoping review. It follows the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses for systematic review protocols (PRISMA-P). The scoping review will be elaborated based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for scoping reviews (PRISMA-ScR). The scoping review will consider peer-reviewed articles written in English, published or in-press. Grey literature and conference papers will be excluded. Only studies performing the experimental assessment of thermal sensation and thermal comfort of human subjects engaged in sedentary activities within homogeneous environments will be considered suitable for the scoping review. Studies will be retrieved from the Journal Storage (JSTOR), PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science databases. The search strategy will consist of the use of the expression ("thermal comfort" OR "therm* sensation" OR "thermosensation") AND ("sedentary" or "office work*" or "office task*"). After removing duplicates, the remaining studies will have their title, abstract, and keywords screened. Studies meeting the eligibility criteria will be selected for full-text screening. Data items will be summarized using summary tables, and their reporting will consider the PRISMA-ScR checklist. The scoping review aims to summarize the existing scientific evidence and identify research needs to experimentally assess the thermal sensation and the thermal comfort of subjects performing sedentary tasks.

Cardiac autonomic responses to different tasks in office workers with access to a sit-stand table – a study in real work setting

The aim of this study was to characterise the cardiac autonomic modulation of different office tasks performed by office workers with access to a sit-stand table. Heart rate variability (HRV) of 24 office workers was measured for two hours during three days in the last week of sit-stand table use. HRV indexes and the percentage of heart rate reserve (%HRR) were calculated during computer and non-computer work tasks while sitting or standing, non-computer tasks away from the work desk, and informal work breaks. All cardiac autonomic responses demonstrated a statistically significant interaction effect between the tasks (all p < 0.05) except for the logarithmically-transformed high frequency power (ln HF ms2; p = 0.14). Tasks performed while standing and away from the desk had higher sympathetic modulation; in addition, the observed higher %HRR demonstrated that these tasks were more physically demanding in comparison to other tasks. Practitioner Summary: Prior reports indicated benefits based on alternated body postures using sit-stand table. Nevertheless, the cardiac autonomic responses of different tasks performed by office workers are unknown. This cross-sectional study showed that different tasks stimulate the cardiac autonomic nervous system in different ways, which could bring positive effects to the cardiovascular system.

SCIENCE FICTION AND METHODOLOGY

SCIENCE FICTION AND METHODOLOGY

Self-Efficacy, Pain Intensity, Rheumatic Disease Duration, and Hand Functional Disability on Activities of Daily Living.

Knowledge regarding the possible influence of self-efficacy, pain intensity and disease duration on hand functional disability could promote new intervention strategies for activities of daily living (ADLs) in patients with rheumatic disease (RD). These approaches could prevent the health problems and socioeconomic costs associated with these diseases. The aims of this study were to evaluate if there are differences between the levels of perceived self-efficacy, pain intensity and disease duration among people with RD and non-RD diseases, and to analyze if hand functional disability in ADLs is related to self-efficacy, pain intensity and disease duration in a sample of patients with RD. A multicenter, observational, cross-sectional study was conducted on a total sample of 335 participants over 50 years old (176 patients with RD and 159 individuals with non-RD). The Duruöz Hand Index, the General Perceived Self-Efficacy Scale, the Rheumatic Diseases Self-Efficacy Scale (RDS-ES), the Visual Analog Scale (VAS), and the mean time of evolution in years of the disease (disease duration) were used to analyze the possible relationships surrounding hand functional disability in ADLs. The comparison analysis showed significant differences between the RD/non-RD sample for the General Perceived Self-Efficacy Scale, RDS-ES, and VAS scores (p < .001). The multiple regression results showed that age, General Perceived Self-Efficacy Scale scores, RDS-ES scores, VAS scores, and disease duration (or a combination of some of them) explained the variability of hand functional disability in almost 68% of kitchen tasks, 44% of dressing tasks, 46% of hygiene and other tasks, and 47% of office tasks. Our study shows that general and domain-specific self-efficacy, pain intensity, and disease duration are predictors of the dimensions of hand functional disability in patients with RD. Early evaluation of these components with an interdisciplinary approach would help to manage hand disability properly.

A particle swarm optimization-based feature selection for unsupervised transfer learning

Transfer learning (TL) method has captured an attractive presence because it facilitates the learning ability in the target domain by acquiring knowledge from well-established source domains. To gain strong knowledge from the source domain, it is important to narrow down the distribution difference between the source and the target domains. For this purpose, it is necessary to consider the objectives such as preserving the discriminative information, preserving the original similarity of the source and the target domain data, maximizing the variance of the target domain, and preserving marginal and conditional distribution at the same time. Furthermore, some existing TL methods use only original feature data, so there is a threat of degenerated feature transformation. To overcome all these limitations, in this paper, a novel feature selection-based transfer learning approach using particle swarm optimization (PSO) for unsupervised transfer learning (FSUTL-PSO) is implemented. In FSUTL-PSO, we incorporate all such objectives into one fitness function and select common good features from the source and target domains based on the fitness function for eliminating the threat of degenerated features. Extensive experiments have been done on all possible tasks of Office+Caltech and PIE Face datasets and our proposed method FSUTL-PSO has shown significant improvement over the existing transfer or non-transfer learning methods.