Adjustable Height Tables: Luxury or Necessity

When you show off adjustable height furniture to most people, they’ll readily concede that it’s a cool addition to the workplace that may promote worker comfort. Unfortunately, that’s generally where most people’s examination of the matter ends. Ergonomic furniture like adjustable height tables and desks may be a nice little creature comforts to have while at work, they’ll say, but that’s about it. In the minds of many, while such things are good to have, they represent a luxury and not a necessity.

But is this really true? Is comfort really so overrated? Or does making sure that desk workers have a pleasant and agreeable work environment have underappreciated ripple effects?

Increasingly, prominent companies in major industries have made investments in providing ergonomic tables and workstations to their workers. They’ve come to see that there are important spillover benefits to making such investments.

RDM Industrial Products offers many kinds of adjustable tables to laboratories and other workplaces where good desks are essential. Our products come in many varieties, are customizable, and are all proudly manufactured in the USA. Here’s some important information about the kinds of tables we can offer you and the ways in which they can make your workplace a happier and more productive place.

Types of Adjustable Height Tables

At its heart, a height adjustable desk is just what it sounds like it is — a desk whose platform height can be changed and whose legs can be either lightened or shortened, as the situation requires. But RDM manufactures a variety of different industrial-quality lift tables. Here are just a few of the categories that our products fall into:

• I-Frame Tables: These tables are perhaps the simplest and most standard kind of adjustable height desk. They come with telescoping legs which you can manually either lengthen or shorten. This is done using a crank located right at the front of the desk. Turn the crank one way to shorten the legs, and turn it the other way to lengthen them.
• Hydraulic Lift Tables: These tables come with a hydraulic motor which can be used to automatically either increase or decrease desk height to the ideal level. To do this, you simply flip a switch.
• Adjustable Height Tilt-Top Tables: These tables have the added special feature of allowing you to tilt their surfaces off to the side so that the table is made to look somewhat like an artist’s easel holding up a canvas. An adjustable height tilt top table can be either a light table — in which case, it would have its own lamps or lightbulbs to illuminate the table surface — or it can just be a standard table. Similarly, the raising and lowering mechanism can be customized to either be a hand crank, as in an I-frame table, or a hydraulic motor.
• Ergonomic Tables: These tables are height-adjustable just as the others are, but they are also specially designed to be handicapped-accessible and to promote maximum comfort. Workers in wheelchairs, for example, can sit at them comfortably.

Have a look at RDM’s large collection of industrial-quality and factory-direct height-adjustable desks here.

Adjustable Height Tables Have Distinct Features

Now that you know a bit about the kinds of adjustable tables we can craft for you, what makes them so special? What can they do? Beyond the various raising and lowering styles and mechanisms that we’ve already discussed, here are a few more important general features:

• Materials: Aluminum and stainless steel are the most common materials out of which RDM manufactures its tables. This is especially true of table frames. If you desire different surface materials — say, wood or plastic — we can manufacture things to your specifications.
• Styles: We manufacture both variable-height tables and workbenches. Workbenches come with racks attached to them, or they can have their own surfaces in addition to the main desk surface. These surfaces, too, are height-adjustable.
• Shapes and Sizes: Tables can be either small and square-shaped or they can be long and rectangular. We even manufacture L-shaped tables that look almost like two tables welded together. Dimensions are totally customizable, with surfaces measuring from as little as 30 inches across to as much as 96 inches across.
• Lift Height: Lift variability can be as little as 6 inches or as much as 16 inches.
• Weight-bearing Capacity: Weight-bearing capacity can vary for our tables and workbenches from as little as 500 pounds to as much as 1,500 pounds.
• Accessories: We can also add various accessories to your tables, like wheels or attached cabinets, or file drawers.

Key Benefits

Now that you know so much about adjustable height tables, why should you get them? How can they make a lab or other work environment into a better place? And most importantly, are these benefits only minor ones, or are they more substantial.

The primary benefits of height adjustable desks are health-related, but these health benefits, as we’ll show, can have spillover effects on your lab’s or company’s bottom line.

According to multiple studies that have been conducted on these matters, adjustable hight tables can bestow an enormous amount of health benefits upon your lab workforce. Some of these can include a reduction in back pain and a long-run reduction in blood sugar levels. Long hours of doing sedentary work in an uncomfortable setting can lead to weight gain, which is known to have an effect on mood. Even cardiovascular problems have been known to follow in the wake of many years spent working at uncomfortable desks. An adjustable height desk even makes it possible to work while standing, which has actually been shown to increase life expectancy.

Of course, your workers will love you if they see that you’re looking out for their health, but there are more practical effects for your organization that can follow from introducing these desks. They can improve worker well-being. Happy workers are more productive workers. They come to work energized and ready to accomplish as much as possible. Fewer long-run health problems for your workers also means lower health insurance costs for workers, which can come back to benefit companies as well.

With advantages like this, it’s clear that variable-height desks are necessities for every lab manager and business owner who thinks ahead.

Which Industries Use Adjustable Height Tables?

If this doesn’t convince you to check out RDM’s selection of variable-height tables, here are just a few industries that make regular use of them:

• Scientific research laboratories
• Software firms
• Medical labs
• Banks
• Financial research firms
• Engineering and architectural firms

Conclusion

Industries of all kinds that employ significant amounts of desk workers have begun taking steps to safeguard their workers from the ill effects of many years of desk work. In doing so, they have reaped practical rewards.

The same can be true for your lab. Check out RDM’s selection of adjustable height tables today.