The Business of Ergonomics Podcast

Jerad Arendt is a physical therapist and ergonomics consultant who’s been working directly with furniture manufacturer KI on their award-winning kinetic seating technology. 

In this episode, he breaks down the biomechanics of why static sitting locks down your pelvis and lumbar spine, and how KI’s 360-degree orbital movement system actually frees that up. 

We get into what it’s like consulting for a major manufacturer, how to translate clinical expertise into product marketing, and why “stillness, not sitting” might be the real problem we’ve been fighting all along. 

Jerad also makes the case that this chair isn’t just competing with other chairs anymore. It’s competing with chiropractors and doctors.

Ready to build your ergonomics business? Check out the Accelerate Program: https://ergonomicshelp.com/accelerate

Discover How to Add Office Ergonomics Assessments to Your Practice and Charge $300-$1,000+ per Client. Click here to save your seat for this FREE training: https://ergonomicshelp.com/ergo-webinar/

Task chairs are the piece of equipment ergonomists get asked about more than anything else. They're also where clients reliably spend the most money and get the least return because nobody explained the features that actually matter.

This episode is for ergonomics practitioners. We go through seven task chairs using the same clinical feature framework we use in our Ergo Equipment Database inside Accelerate: lumbar height, lumbar pressure and depth, independent back angle, seat depth adjustment, 4D arms, backrest airflow, headrest availability, sizing range, seat pan modification options, warranty, and return policy. Not the marketing copy. The clinical picture.

The 6 chairs:

• Branch Pro (~USD $500-649)
• Steelcase Leap V2 (~USD $1,200-1,500 new / USD $400-750 refurbished)
• HON Ignition (~USD $400-600)
• Herman Miller Aeron (~USD $1,400-1,800)
• ErgoCentric AirCentric (~USD $800-1,200)
• Humanscale Freedom (~USD $1,200-1,500)

All 6 chairs and dozens more are in the Accelerate Ergo Equipment Database, where members can run side-by-side comparisons matched to a client's specific clinical picture and download a branded comparison guide to hand directly to clients. Access through Accelerate: The Business of Ergonomics at ergonomicshelp.com/accelerate.

We're also running a free training next Wednesday September 23rd at ergonomicshelp.com/infographic.

Discover How to Add Office Ergonomics Assessments to Your Practice and Charge $300-$1,000+ per Client. Click here to save your seat for this FREE training: https://ergonomicshelp.com/ergo-webinar/

What happens when a physical therapist walks 200 feet from the treatment room to the workstation and realizes the desk is doing more damage than anything they could fix with their hands?

That's the moment that changed everything for today's guest, Jerad Arendt, a PT who built his career at the intersection of physical therapy, industrial ergonomics, and on-site occupational health. In this conversation, he shares how he went from traditional PT to embedded on-site clinician, how he makes the ROI case directly to the C-suite, and what healthcare professionals with clinical backgrounds can do right now to move upstream in the injury cycle.

What's covered:

• The workstation moment: the patient whose neck pain was fixed not by treatment, but by fixing her desk setup
• Three carpal tunnel surgeries and a $250,000 machine: the cost analysis that changed a company's mind
• 93% injury rate reduction in one month from moving where bolts were stored on an assembly line
• The fractional PT/ergonomist model: how one or two company contracts can supply half your patient load
• Early intervention vs. reactive treatment: why getting closer to the injury changes everything
• How to approach HR and safety managers when you're a clinician seeing patterns in your patient base
• Why bypassing insurance for direct company contracts is simpler, better reimbursed, and more sustainable
• The 6-to-18-month company sales cycle and why the long game is worth it
• How companies evolve from skeptical to fully committed, and what that trajectory looks like

Discover How to Add Office Ergonomics Assessments to Your Practice and Charge $300-$1,000+ per Client. Click here to save your seat for this FREE training: https://ergonomicshelp.com/ergo-webinar/

Most ergonomists follow a similar path. School, where the theory is fascinating but the practical is thin. Learning the ropes, where the real work begins and the gap between what you studied and what clients actually need becomes very clear. And then the big question: is entrepreneurship the final boss?

This episode maps the three phases of the ergonomics career journey through an honest, experience-based lens, covering what school gives you and what it doesn't, the three paths into real-world ergonomics experience, and what the shift toward independent practice actually requires, starting with the thing most ergonomics programs never teach: marketing.

What's covered:

• Phase 1: School, what ergonomics education gives you and the critical gap between theory and practice
• Why office ergonomics assessments specifically are the practical gateway to everything else in the field
• Phase 2: Learning the ropes, the three paths (internship, mentorship, nine-to-five) and when each one makes sense
• Phase 3: Flying your wings, what the entrepreneurship decision actually looks like and how to approach it
• Why job security in a nine-to-five is more of an illusion than it feels
• The marketing system problem: why scattered posts don't build a practice
• The real question: are you known as the go-to ergonomics professional in your city, or invisible until someone gets hurt?

Free live training for new ergonomists: ergonomicshelp.com/ergo-webinar

Scale your ergonomics practice with Accelerate: ergonomicshelp.com/accelerate

Discover How to Add Office Ergonomics Assessments to Your Practice and Charge $300-$1,000+ per Client. Click here to save your seat for this FREE training: https://ergonomicshelp.com/ergo-webinar/

Reactive ergonomics: someone gets hurt and their company calls you. It's stressful, it's rushed, and the moment you finish the report, it's over. 

Prevention ergonomics: the client already values what you do, already has a budget, and wants to keep working with you. 

These are 2 very different businesses. This episode makes the case for why the second one should be the goal and covers the 5 concrete reasons why prevention and proactive ergonomics services are the most valuable work an ergonomics consultant can build toward. 

What's covered:

• Why the marketing rule of 7 is now completely outdated, and what the research says the real number is in 2026 and beyond. 
• The difference between a reactive a reactive client mindset and a prevention mindset, and why it matters for your income 
• Reason 1: no more "we need you yesterday" urgency. Prevention clients work on your schedule 
• Reason 2: Prevention work is not transactional; it builds recurring revenue
• Reason 3: A culture of prevention means a plan, a budget, and a long-term relationship
• Reason 4: Prevention-oriented employers have a multi-year vision and they want you in it
• Reason 5: Prevention-oriented employers have a multi-year vision and they want you in it 

And we'll also cover why infographics are one of the easiest and most effective tools to shift clients from reactive to prevention thinking. 

Register today: https://ergonomicshelp.com/infographic/ 

Discover How to Add Office Ergonomics Assessments to Your Practice and Charge $300-$1,000+ per Client. Click here to save your seat for this FREE training: https://ergonomicshelp.com/ergo-webinar/

Most ergonomics professionals stop at the assessment. But the businesses in your city need more than that, and if you're only offering one service, you're leaving a significant amount of work on the table.

This episode covers the three services that work together to create a full-cycle ergonomics offering: ergonomic risk assessments, physical demands analysis (also called job demands analysis), and functional accommodations. Together, these three create a prevention-to-return-to-work system that every employer should have and most don't.

What's covered:

• Proactive vs. reactive ergonomics risk assessments and how to use reactive entry points to shift companies toward prevention
• What a physical demands analysis is, why every workplace should have one on file, and why it's one of the highest-fee services you can offer
• How job demands analysis connects to return-to-work planning and why workers' compensation boards increasingly expect it
• Functional accommodations: how to compare a worker's functional capabilities to the job demands to support safe, effective return to work
• Three real-world examples of how these services chain together into weeks of work from a single client
• The four C's of marketing your ergonomics business: content, consistency, connect, and communication 

Discover How to Add Office Ergonomics Assessments to Your Practice and Charge $300-$1,000+ per Client. Click here to save your seat for this FREE training: https://ergonomicshelp.com/ergo-webinar/

Chairs are the number one thing clients ask about and one of the hardest things to recommend well. Not because chairs are complicated, but because of how almost everyone evaluates them: a 30-second sit test that tells the body nothing about what eight hours of use will actually feel like.

This episode covers the three things every ergonomics professional needs in their toolkit when it comes to chair selection: the research-backed 18-minute rule, the chair features that actually matter, and the ergo showroom strategy for helping clients try before they buy.

What's covered:

• Why a 2-minute sit test is almost meaningless and what the research says instead
• The 18-minute rule and why fidgeting is an objective measure of discomfort, not restlessness
• The chair features that actually matter: lumbar (height and depth), synchro-tilt, multi-tilt, tension control, seat depth, and armrests
• The note-to-self on synchro-tilt and the tension adjustment that could send your client flying out of the chair
• Three levels of the ergo showroom strategy: external showroom visits, lending equipment during assessments, and in-house showrooms for larger clients
• The accommodations and return-to-work angle that makes in-house showrooms a financial no-brainer for larger employers

This episode is sponsored by the Ergonomics Blueprint and Accelerate: The Business of Ergonomics.

New to office ergonomics assessments? Start with the free live training: ergonomicshelp.com/ergo-webinar

Already trained and ready to scale your practice? Join Accelerate: ergonomicshelp.com/accelerate

Referenced Literature: Cascioli, V., Liu, Z., Heusch, A., & McCarthy, P. (2016). A methodology using in-chair movements as an objective measure of discomfort for the purpose of statistically distinguishing between similar seat surfaces. Applied Ergonomics, 54, 100-109.

Discover How to Add Office Ergonomics Assessments to Your Practice and Charge $300-$1,000+ per Client. Click here to save your seat for this FREE training: https://ergonomicshelp.com/ergo-webinar/

This episode is a real, unscripted group coaching call from inside the Ergonomics Blueprint program. Every month, Blueprint members get a live session with Darcie where they bring their actual clients, actual pricing questions, and actual challenges. This is what that looks like.

One of our members is in the middle of landing a significant new client: a nonprofit emergency response agency that wants a full suite of ergonomics services and has already invited her to their Safety Day. The questions that come up are exactly what practitioners run into when a real opportunity is in front of them and they want to handle it right.

What this call covers:

• How to structure and price follow-up visits so you never get painted into a corner after the quote goes out
• The tiered service model: discomfort survey, group training, quick workstation checks, and full assessments only for who needs them
• How to write proposals that sell benefits, not features (and the 'So that?' question that changes how you describe every service)
• Why presenting quotes in person turned a cautious HR contact into an enthusiastic client 
• The three-option pricing strategy and why the middle option is always the one they pick
• How to price a project where you don't know upfront exactly how many full assessments will be needed
• What to give every participant after a group session so the client has documentation and you have a record

If you're figuring out how to price your first big client, how to structure a proposal that doesn't scare anyone off, or how to explain the value of what you do to someone who has never heard of a discomfort survey, this call is for you.

Ready to get this kind of coaching for your own practice? 

The Ergonomics Blueprint teaches you how to do office ergonomics assessments from the ground up, including the business side, the pricing, the proposals, and how to bring in the clients to use those skills on. Monthly group coaching calls with Darcie are included.

Discover How to Add Office Ergonomics Assessments to Your Practice and Charge $300-$1,000+ per Client. Click here to save your seat for this FREE training: https://ergonomicshelp.com/ergo-webinar/

"We don't have to do this. There's no law that says we have to do ergonomics."

"We're already covered. We bought good chairs."

Sound familiar? These are the two most common objections ergonomics consultants hear from potential clients. And both of them reflect a regulatory picture that most businesses have completely wrong.

In this episode, Darcie Jaremey breaks down the five biggest misconceptions about workplace ergonomics that keep businesses from taking action and from working with qualified practitioners like you. Drawing on a July 2026 legal analysis from JD Supra by labor attorney Sarah Goodman of Offit Kurman, Darcie gives you the accurate regulatory picture and shows you exactly how to use it in your next client conversation. (Here's the full article: https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/no-standard-still-liable-how-osha-7637946/)

What you'll take away:

• Why 'no OSHA standard' does not mean 'no duty' and how to explain this to any prospect in under two minutes
• The General Duty Clause: what it is, why it applies to office ergonomics, and how OSHA used it against Amazon without a single specific ergonomics rule
• The hazard alert letter most HR managers have never heard of — and why ignoring it builds a willful violation case worth up to $156,259 per violation
• Why office workers are absolutely not exempt — and the state-level laws in Minnesota, Washington, California, Oregon, and Michigan that prove it
• Why 'we bought chairs and did training' is purchasing activity, not a safety program and what Cornell University's research says about that
• he biggest sales reframe in this episode: from 'do we need an assessment?' to 'how do you know what you already spent actually worked?' 
• How to turn every one of these misconceptions into a content piece, a sales conversation, and a reason a client picks up the phone

This episode is content you can repurpose 50 times. Darcie explains why these five facts bear repeating across LinkedIn, email, and every client conversation you have.

Accelerate: The Business of Ergonomics gives ergonomics consultants and healthcare professionals time-saving resources and plug-and-play content so that you can become the Go-To Ergonomics Consultant in your city.

Click here to get started.

Discover How to Add Office Ergonomics Assessments to Your Practice and Charge $300-$1,000+ per Client. Click here to save your seat for this FREE training: https://ergonomicshelp.com/ergo-webinar/

Something has been circulating in our industry, and it's causing real problems for employers and for ergonomics professionals who are trying to build credible practices around genuine client needs.

There are articles claiming that employers face a December 2026 OSHA deadline to complete home office ergonomic audits under a new remote work framework. In this episode, Darcie Jaremey digs into where that claim is actually coming from, why it's flat-out false, and what the real regulatory picture looks like for remote worker ergonomics.

The short answer: there is no deadline. OSHA's position on home offices has not changed since 2000. But the real obligations employers do have around recordkeeping, workers' compensation, and accommodation law are significant, and the injury data alone makes the case for action without any manufactured urgency attached to it.

What you'll take away:

• Why the December 2026 OSHA deadline is fabricated and who benefits from spreading it
• OSHA's actual formal guidance on home office inspections, quoted directly from the source
• The General Duty Clause: what it is, what it requires, and why it applies regardless of where work happens
• The three real employer obligations that do apply to remote workers right now: recordkeeping under 29 CFR Part 1904, workers' comp exposure, and ADA accommodation law
• Why a chair purchase is not an ergonomic assessment, and why that matters for both employers and consultants
• What a real remote ergonomics program actually looks like

61.2% of home-based workers report musculoskeletal discomfort from their home setup. That number is documented, real, and more than enough to justify action. No fake deadline required.

Want to build an ergonomics practice that gives clients the accurate picture and earns their trust?

That's exactly what Accelerate: The Business of Ergonomics is built for. Accelerate gives you the training, tools, and coaching to attract corporate clients, charge what you're worth, and build a practice you're proud of. You'll get monthly live coaching with Darcie, a curated equipment database, done-for-you content and swipe copy, business growth modules, and a community of ergonomics professionals doing the same work you are.

Join at ergonomicshelp.com/accelerate

Resources mentioned:

• Accelerate: The Business of Ergonomics: ergonomicshelp.com/accelerate
• OSHA Formal Guidance on Home Offices (1999): osha.gov
• OSHA Injury Cost Estimator: osha.gov

Discover How to Add Office Ergonomics Assessments to Your Practice and Charge $300-$1,000+ per Client. Click here to save your seat for this FREE training: https://ergonomicshelp.com/ergo-webinar/