Tell us if this sounds familiar. You are sitting in your office after spending several hours reviewing spreadsheets on your computer. As you are wrapping up one final project before you head home, you keep shifting your body on your chair. It feels impossible to get into a comfortable position. While you are feeling stressed about this last task you need to complete at the office, you get even more stressed when you can’t get comfortable in your chair. Along with your general discomfort, you are starting to feel pain in your back and in your neck. You grind your teeth and try ignoring the pain so you can complete your project and go home. Whether the pain is sharp or blunt, you have noticed that the pain is accumulating. It isn’t getting any better.

For many unfortunate employees, this is the reality—day after day. They have to suffer through work in a chair that isn’t optimized for their health, comfort, or happiness. Whether you have a true nine to five job or are in the office for much longer than that, you need to be comfortable in the office. Your job is stressful enough. Discomfort at the office not only hurts you, but it hurts your company as well. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, companies suffer $81 billion in lost productivity due to discomfort in the workplace. People who say that the furniture in their workplace is “bad” are three times more likely to feel that the environment hurts their productivity and are two times more likely to view their environment as depressing. Even if you think that complaining about your current chair “isn’t a big deal,” rest assured that it is — especially if your colleagues feel the same way. Clearly, the status quo in our offices is unacceptable. That said, all hope is not lost.

According to a study by the British Council of Offices, there is a 23 percent increase in productivity when uncomfortable office furniture is replaced. This productivity leads to an organization’s bottom line. In other words, the future doesn’t have to be so bleak. There are options.

To help you make your office experience much better, we recommend that you check out the Haworth’s Zody chair. This chair will not only make you a more productive and focused employee, but it will help you avoid some of the common workplace issues that plague employees with uncomfortable office chairs. Click to view the Haworth’s Zody chair.