Desk workers claim the least and stay off work the longest. The ergonomics duty is not about comfort.

The office is already inside the code

The manual tasks code is usually read as a lifting code, but its posture risk factor cuts both ways. Sustained posture, where part of or the whole body is kept in the same position for a prolonged period, is one of the four risk factors that make a task hazardous, and the code's own examples include "prolonged sitting at a workstation" alongside supporting plasterboard while it is nailed. Its awkward-posture examples include "bending over a desk or table". No load needs to be lifted: a task with any one risk factor is a hazardous manual task, and the duty in regulation 60 follows, to manage the risk of a musculoskeletal disorder in accordance with the standard identify-assess-control-review cycle. The regulation then lists what must be weighed in choosing controls, and three of the seven matters are pure workplace design: the design of the work area, the layout of the workplace, and the systems of work used. The definition of musculoskeletal disorder in the model regulations covers injury or disease "whether occurring suddenly or over time", which is precisely how office injuries arrive: not one bad lift but months of the same neck angle.

What a compliant workstation actually looks like

The code is specific about the desk. An office workstation should suit the range of workers who may use it and the tasks and equipment involved, be flexible, large enough, and easily adjustable, with adjustment mechanisms that do not themselves create a hazardous manual task. Workers should be able to work upright, shoulders relaxed and not elevated, upper arms close to the trunk, without large reaches. Frequently used displays and controls, keyboards included, belong directly in front of the worker. And the code sets working heights by the nature of the task:

Working heights as the manual tasks code states them (chapter 4.3, workstation design). The code expresses these as design guidance for the person conducting a business or undertaking, not as fixed dimensions: the reference point is each worker's own elbow, hip and shoulder height, which is why adjustability is the recurring requirement.

Seating gets the same treatment: adjustable seat height and angle, a contoured backrest with a lumbar curve, a swivel action so the worker does not twist to reach things, rounded seat edges, a five-point base, and a footrest where an assessment finds one is needed. The work environment and facilities code adds two things worth noticing. First, workstation suitability is framed as a must: "You must provide workstations suitable for the person and the task." Second, consultation is not optional furniture here; the code states it is a requirement that workers are consulted when a workstation assessment is carried out. Different workers need different working heights, and the person who knows where a desk hurts is the person sitting at it.

Sitting is a hazard even when nothing hurts yet

Safe Work Australia's sitting and standing guidance puts numbers on sedentary risk that most office policies never reach. Sitting is likely to be bad for your health when you sit for longer than 30 minutes without a break, or all day at work; "Over 7 hours a day of sedentary behaviour is too much." The health problems it lists run past the musculoskeletal into heart disease, diabetes and poor mental health, and the guidance is blunt that they "remain even if you exercise every day". The answer in both the guidance and the code is the same: design so postures can vary. Neither instrument mandates sit-stand desks; the guidance instead lists cheap movement design, standing for calls and document reading, walking to a colleague instead of emailing, and for standing tasks a stool to alternate against, a footrest, and cushioning on hard floors.

Since July 2023 the same logic formally follows workers home. Safe Work Australia's working-from-home information sheet for PCBUs states that WHS laws apply to home workplaces just as they do to offices, and its hazard list for computer-based home work opens with poor workstation setup and sedentary work. Its control examples are concrete: adjustable chairs, monitors to prevent prolonged laptop use, regular breaks from sedentary work, and workstation checklists before an arrangement starts. It also carries a line worth quoting to any employer treating home setups as the worker's own problem: "If you cannot meet your WHS duties, you must not require, or agree to, workers working from home." The psychosocial half of that same information sheet, the always-on hours and isolation, belongs to the psychosocial hazards page.

Rare, then long: what the claims data says about desks

The occupation table in Safe Work Australia's Key WHS Statistics 2025 is usually quoted for its top: labourers at 23.1 serious claims per million hours worked. Read from the bottom and it becomes an office ergonomics story. Clerical and administrative workers have the lowest claim frequency of any occupation group, 2.1 per million hours against an all-occupations average of 6.8, with managers at 2.3 and professionals at 2.9. But the desk occupations hold the longest median absences in the same table: 11.0 weeks for managers and 10.0 weeks for clerical and administrative workers, against 6.8 weeks for labourers, with median compensation of $29,400 and $24,200 against the labourers' $14,400. An office injury is unlikely; an office injury that happens is, on the medians, a longer and dearer one, which is exactly the profile of the gradual-onset musculoskeletal disorders this page is about, and one more reason a written return-to-work plan matters as much in a white-collar business as on a site.