Office Workstation Self Assessment

This template is one entry point into office ergonomics, and it is deliberately light-touch. Where a setup needs judgement a worker cannot supply, or where vision is the concern, a different template in the programme is the right instrument.

Neither ISO 9241 nor CSA Z412 is a checklist standard; both describe what a well laid out workstation looks like and leave the assessment method open. The template's sections map to the postural and layout requirements those standards describe, worker-observable rather than measured.

Nowhere mandates a worker self-checklist by name. What varies is whether display screen work carries a named duty at all, which shapes how seriously an employer should treat what this template surfaces.

A self assessment only works if the worker recognises what it is describing. The template leans on that, and the parts that make it defensible are the ones that check whether the recognition actually happened.

Because this is a self-service checklist, the common findings are less about wrong answers and more about answers that go nowhere.

A worker completed their yearly self assessment and, in 'issues you cannot fix yourself', wrote that their desk did not adjust and sat too high for their chair. Every other field was answered well, feet flat, knees at hip height, screen at eye level, and the record was marked complete.

Ten months later the worker raised a discomfort report for their lower back. The prior self assessment was pulled as part of the review, and the desk-height note was still there, unactioned, because nothing had treated free text in that field as a trigger. The fix was not a better question; it was making that field generate a request automatically rather than relying on someone to reread it.

A self assessment is only as good as what happens after the worker submits it. The work that slips is not the checklist; it is the free-text answer nobody turns into an action.

KnowErgo

Holds the self assessment library against the worker and site registers, and flags any 'cannot fix yourself' answer that has not generated an equipment request.

KnowTrain

Connects a run of poor chair or screen answers to the reference material and training a worker may not have actually seen.

Ella

Watches for discomfort answered yes without a linked discomfort report, and raises that gap rather than waiting for someone to reread the record.

Self assessment

An ergonomics check completed by the worker at their own workstation, using guided questions and reference material rather than a visiting assessor.

Neutral posture

A joint position that requires the least muscular effort to hold, the reference point most of the chair and screen questions are checking against.

Escalation

The point at which a finding the worker cannot resolve is handed to an equipment request or a formal assessment, rather than left recorded in the self assessment.

Risk band

The banded output of the scoring here, where a higher band signals more items answered against the poor end of the scale.

Reference image

Diagrams or short video shown alongside a question so the worker can compare their own setup against a known-correct one before answering.