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Are offices healthy places to work? Not particularly – but then, where is? Get a job in a gym and you’ll probably suffer sprains and strains from all the equipment, plus respiratory problems after years of breathing the exhaust fumes from too many pairs of sweaty trainers.

Stress can also make you more susceptible to any illnesses that are doing the rounds. Feeling generally unwell can induce stress.

Don’t despair, though – the good news is there’s a lot you can do to fight back. You can overcome this obstacle just like all the other problems of office life. All it needs is a little fine tuning and the same businesslike planning you apply to the rest of your job. For a start, look at the practical things that cause stress.

Eight Top Tips for a Healthier Office

Caroline Blaazer is a senior consultant at The Industrial Society, and an expert in health and safety at work. Here are her top tips for keeping your own work area as healthy as possible:

1 Adjust the screen of your VDU. The angle and direction of your screen are important to good posture. Remember you should be looking slightly down on it.

Also adjust the colour, definition and contrast. A screen that is too bright can be harsh on the eyes. Then use screen wipes to clean dust off your screen. Static on screens causes dust build-up.

2 Adjust your chair. The right height of chair is also vital to your posture. Remember to move about after forty-five minutes or so, and avoid letting your feet dangle as it is bad for the circulation of the legs.

3 Avoid Repetitive Strain Injury. Take the strain from your upper arms when you type and don’t rest your wrists on the desk. Caroline says the muscles in the upper arms are far better developed for coping with the strain of typing. Laptops are difficult, though, because it’s hard not to hunch over them.

Take a break every forty-five minutes and have a coffee or a walk around. Caroline advises clenching your fists, rotating your shoulders and looking into the distance as a vital muscle-reliever. ‘The musculo-skeletal system is not designed to take static loading,’ according to Caroline, ‘and you need to avoid the chance of it seizing up.’

A good tip would be to have a timer on your desk, set to bleep at each forty-five minute interval, in case you become too entrenched in your work.

Managers should be grateful when staff take small breaks like this as working quickly without pause tends to make work less accurate.

4 Get your eyes tested. Caroline suggests every two years, or as often as the optician guides you. Too many people get caught peering at their screen or paperwork.

5 Rearrange your work-station. When people allow their workplace to get cluttered, desk chaos ensues, together with associated stresses and strains such as painful backache which is aggravated as you reach for the phone, in the same awkward way, for the fiftieth time that morning. Caroline advises that you have the phone on your left side if you are right-handed, which leaves the right free to write messages.

According to Caroline, ‘Most office desks aren’t designed for a VDU and its cables. You could buy a bracket to store your keyboard out of the way when you’re writing, which will give you more space.’

The back legs of your keyboard should also be flipped out to provide a comfortable angle of working.

6 Plants. Plants in the office will moisten the air, which can otherwise get very dry. Humidifiers will also help with this problem, at the same time as soaking up some of the dust.

7 Lights. It’s possible to have too much light in an office, especially if you have bright, natural light competing with harsh ceiling lights. Caroline suggests removing one tube from fluorescent lights to soften them. Daylight can cause glare, which is why a filter in front of the VDU screen can be useful.

Caroline suggests up-lighting as the kindest to lights must always be fixed.

8 Decoration. Ideally, wall paint should be matt, as glare from a shiny desk or gloss walls can cause fatigue and stress. Caroline recommends light, rather than dark colours for walls, as dark walls will tend to appear closer to you and therefore more confining.