Start-up offices may benefit from buying used office furniture including used office chairs. Using your budget more for operational expenses may be a good suggestion especially during the first year of operation. Ensuring proper selection of used office chairs may dissolve your fear for buying ill-health promoting used office chairs. You can still follow the ergonomic requirement of the government if you can find used office chairs that follow the basic requirements of ergonomic design.

Apart from it, employees should have conscious effort to sit properly and check their posture while sitting to avoid health related problems including recurring back pains, repetitive strain injury (RSI) and musculoskeletal disorders (MSD).

Basic features you need to look for in buying used office chairs are:

- The chair should follow the natural curvature of your spine. The spine has an ‘S’ shape; a lumbar support follows this natural shape. However, if you cannot find a used office chair with built in lumbar support, you can buy a stand alone lumbar support for this purpose.
- Comfortable seat and ensure that the users food touches the ground, consider the average size of your employees. You do not need to custom fit the used office chairs you need to buy, just take note of the average size that fits most of your employees.
- Soft cushion that will not make your spine feel stiff. If the cushion is already stiff, back pain is sure to follow. Avoid it in buying used office chair.
- Casters should be 5-legged and rolls smoothly on the surface to which it needs to roll. Carpet and smooth surface have different requirements for casters; you need to check this out before deciding on the used office chair.

These minimum and basic features of used office chair in combination with proper sitting position will help prevent incidence of back pain and bad posture.

The following are good sitting posture employees should follow to avoid health problems including RSI and MSD.

- Sit comfortably as close as possible to your desk and ensure your upper arms are parallel to your spine. Rest your hands on your work surface and ensure your elbows are not at a 90 degrees angle.
- Keep a finger-size distance from your feet and your chair front edge.
- Shoulders should slightly touch the armrest so that you can relax your neck and shoulders when a feeling of tiredness is starting to manifest.
- Avoid static posture while sitting. Move or shift your position occasionally.
- Stand-up once every hour, this practice will avoid repetitive strain injury and back pain.
- Stretch your fingers, arms and torso to help in the proper circulation of the blood.

Conscious effort in keeping your good posture as you sit to avoiding back pains will ensure productive work performance. Even with used office chairs, one can still ensure a healthy working condition.

Modern office chair designs are definitely wonderful and helpful in keeping a healthy and safe working environment. However, if investing on these new office chairs will take a good part of your start-up capital, may be it is not a good route to take. Proper selection of used office chairs may still be a good bet.