Slashdot Mirror
Australian Tax Office Seeks Keylogger To Combat RSI
schliz writes "The Australian Tax Office plans to track employees' keystrokes and mouse clicks in attempts to address the growing incidence of repetitive strain injuries (RSI) among staff. It hopes to purchase commercial, off-the-shelf 'pause or exercise break software' that delivers safety messages to users, while determining 'more information about the nature of computing use in the workplace.'"
In related news, the Australian government will be placing monitoring devices inside phones to monitor decibel levels and signal quality.
Repetitive stress injury how little to do with actual clicks. It has everything to do with the way people hold their hands over the keyboards and mice.
If you have to lift your hand from the desk or wrist rest, then you are doing it wrong. It's that simple.
...a built in, ready to activate, feature of GNOME?
"The number you have dialed is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again."
This one seems ok. We use it at work also. http://www.rsiguard.com/
A number of Australian government departments toyed with a program called 'Workpace' (made in the Netherlands I believe). I fondly recall a pop-up window telling me to exercise my fingers by employing something that looked remarkably like the shocker.
In the end, it was just an annoyance. It doesn't take a program to tell you your staff need more frequent breaks, better equipment and better OHS reporting.
Works great.
It's available for Win and Lin.
You can set times for mini-breaks and full breaks separately. Full breaks lead you through a configurable series of animated exercises.
I can vouch that they really do work if you do them diligently.
It allows you to (configurably) cancel or postpone a break, but it's geared toward locking the screen so you you're less tempted to skip breaks. You can even set a max time on the computer per day plus log work/breaks on the network.
Click here to install in Debian/Ubuntu/Mint
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
There are companies who focus on these kind of things and can help individuals who work on computers with training exercises and other ways to prevent RSI, back and neck pain, knee pain, etc. I have gotten a lot of help from Body Insight. They also suggest the use of RSIGuard.
Keystroke and mouse movement information won't help. The information you need is "What hand/forearm position are the typists using?", and software can't record that.
To quote my typing teacher, "*smack* Wrists UP!".
NB: proper typing position has the forearms parallel to floor, back of hand flat relative to top of forearm. Raise or lose the seat to achieve this. Fingers should dangle onto the keys, if the first fingerbone is horizontal your seat is too low and needs raised slightly.
RSI is not a bandwagon, it's not something you can use to get a day off. Quite simply because it's not an issue that appears and disappears overnight, it's a long term problem. My girlfriend really loves her job at a bakery, but after years of preparing the icing on donuts she now can't make that movement without physical pain. Other movements are fine, and she still beats me at tennis, but that specific wave of the hand that is repeated over and over again when icing a tray of donuts is completely out of the question. She is slowly recovery now. She has been banned from icing for the last 12 months and is moving onto other activities.
I like my job too yet quite frequently I'll spend all day typing some crap long-winded report. I don't want to do that in pain down the line. But I likely won't have that problem. My office is assessed frequently by ergonomic specialists. Last time round they got me a bigger monitor for no other reason than every so often I cram too much stuff on the screen and lean forward slightly. But then I also have back problems too.
Ergonomics is a serious issue. Treat it like one.