Assessment of Workplace Furniture Design Standards in Nigerian Commercial Banks

Commercial banking operations in Nigeria involve sustained seated work, repetitive data entry tasks, and extended screen use, creating conditions of elevated ergonomic risk for staff who spend the majority of their working hours at fixed workstations. This study assesses the ergonomic adequacy of workplace furniture in ten commercial bank branches across Abuja, Kano, and Enugu, evaluating workstation design against internationally recognised ergonomic standards for office environments. An ergonomic site assessment protocol is applied to a total of two hundred and forty workstations, measuring seat height adjustability, lumbar support quality, desk surface height, monitor positioning, and keyboard and mouse placement. Concurrently, a self-administered Musculoskeletal Discomfort Survey is administered to six hundred and twenty-four bank staff, recording the frequency and severity of musculoskeletal complaints by body region. Findings reveal that seventy-one percent of assessed workstations fail at least two critical ergonomic adequacy criteria, with lumbar support absence and fixed-height seating the most prevalent deficiencies. Self-reported musculoskeletal discomfort rates among bank staff are significantly higher than population norms, with lower back and neck complaints most frequent. The study develops an Office Furniture Ergonomic Specification Guide for Nigerian Commercial Banks, providing purchasing criteria and workstation layout standards for use by procurement and facilities management departments. Recommendations include mandatory ergonomic workstation assessment in the Central Bank of Nigeria's occupational health guidelines for supervised financial institutions. Keywords: ergonomics, workplace furniture, commercial banking, musculoskeletal health, Nigeria.