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Current Research Topics
Current Research Topics
Outcomes
Productivity
Productivity has been challenging to measure for knowledge workers, but is important to understand because it gives a measurement that could affect a company’s profitability. Understanding how ergonomic design, setup, or strategies affect productivity can provide the end users and companies with these valuable measures.Behaviors
How do you get workers to change behavior and make it sustainable? How can you optimize the use of the hardware, software, or real-time exposure for productivity? How can you collect data that is more objective, accurate, and helps to shape behaviors?Factors
Technology
The term technology is not limited to current computing devices but includes software, furniture, fitness monitoring/wearable devices, smart buildings, etc., as well as new computing devices and new ways of interacting with technology. How does changing technology affect the ergonomic risks or effects in the office environment? How can technology be used to improve assessment of ergonomic effects, help change worker behavior, or improve outcomes?Environments
The workplace environment is changing and is no longer just a landscape of traditional workspaces (closed offices, cubicles, etc.). People work in many different locations: work, conference rooms, shared spaces, cafes, home, or public transportation. The office environment is not the only place for the ergonomic challenges—they can also occur in healthcare, higher education, and other workplaces.Demographics, and Office Factors
There may be compounding factors in understanding the effects and risks of ergonomics. Some of those include (but are not limited to): age, nationality, office culture, type of work performed, gender, where people work (cubicle, open area, café, hotel, etc.), how they work (standing, sitting), and time of exposures. These are important factors to consider in the design of research.
OERC 2027 Research Topics:
Office Ergonomics Research Committee Request for Proposals
The Office Ergonomics Research Committee (OERC) invites research proposals for 2027 funding that advance knowledge in human factors and ergonomics for office workers in conventional offices as well as hybrid and remote work environments. We encourage proposals that explore novel approaches, address underexplored challenges, and generate research with actionable insights that support healthier, more productive, and equitable office environments. In each of the priorities, we are interested in understanding the “human factors/ergonomic effects” on physical and mental health, productivity, and/or behavior for each topic and practical recommendations for applying the research findings. The term effects can encompass positive and negative effects (benefits/risks). The following topics are of particular interest to OERC member companies:
NOTE: The research priorities are presented in random order. Position on the list does not indicate importance, and all topics should be considered equally important to the OERC.
• Artificial Intelligence and Human Factors/Ergonomics: Investigate the emerging intersections between artificial intelligence (AI) and ergonomics, focusing on knowledge workers. Explore how AI-driven tools such as agents, intelligent assistants, machine learning algorithms, and multimodal input systems reshape cognitive load, productivity, and workplace metrics in hybrid and digital work environments. Proposals may examine but are not limited to areas such as how AI can enhance behavioral insights through telemetry and data analytics, how AI may impact worker safety, health, or privacy, explore user adaptation to AI systems, implications of AI-based monitoring on workers and organizational decision-making, development and use of tools and policies for AI risk management relative to office workers, and AI use in the development of and implementation in hardware or software products.
• Organizational design/macroergonomics: Identify interventions that effectively manage and reduce employees’ workload, psychosocial stress, fatigue, burnout, and presenteeism/absenteeism, while enhancing performance. Investigate novel work system mechanisms or approaches to improve management performance and to sustain or enhance employees’ well-being, health, safety, and performance. Consider factors such as organizational policies, job design, environmental and social factors, and technology integration in a longitudinal field study.
• Office Workplace Design: Explore new and emerging trends, technologies, and designs in office workplace design and organizational policies to reduce physical symptoms and support cognitive performance for both typical and neurodivergent workers. Field studies with mid-to-long-term exposure measures and intervention assessments are of particular interest.
• Physical and Visual Environment Factors: Investigate the effects of physical and visual environmental factors, including lighting, glare, noise, and acoustic properties, in new work environments supporting hybrid and collaborative work as well as remote work, on associated health, comfort, productivity, and well-being issues.
• Worker Training and Knowledge: Investigate how new and emerging tools and capabilities, such as adaptive and personalized learning pathways, sensing technologies, and feedback, can be leveraged to improve worker self-awareness, training, and knowledge, reduce the risk of injury, improve behavioral metrics, and increase worker well-being, health, and performance.
• New and emerging technologies: Examine the human factors/ergonomics design implications when integrating and implementing novel technologies in the office or knowledge work on user physical and mental health, productivity, comfort, and capability. These technologies may include: hardware & collaborative tools, mobile devices, combined AI/hardware systems, gestures, wearables, voice, Extended Reality (XR), Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) displays, and mixed-modal interactions.