How do you achieve seamlessly integrated, highly functioning workplace productivity? From the bottom up. And we mean that literally. Here are 3 simple, often overlooked, office upgrades that can make a big difference in employee engagement as productivity.

• Office Chairs

Think you’ve already got your office employees settled into the most comfortable chairs on the market? Efficiency is not the same for everybody. Just as some office employees sleep on marshmallowy beds and others sleep on beds as hard as a board, so does each bottom respond differently. Yes, you can get a short term economic boost by buying office chairs in bulk, but long term savings may potentially dwarf that budget-conscious decision by going the extra distance and giving each of your employees a stipend to be spent buying the office chair of their choice.

• Eyestrain

The effects of eyestrain on office workers could is like a slowly leaking faucet. At some level you are aware of it happening, but you don’t see any immediate reason to invest time and effort stopping it. Overhead lighting, the glare of the sun, the size of computer monitors, the default settings for colors and fonts and other factors all contribute to a decline in vision that can impact your business over a lifetime or over the course of a day. A worker having trouble reading what’s on the computer screen can present a number obstacles to workplace productivity ranging from a lagging pace of work to misreading a decimal point that could literally cost you money, loyalty and trust. How to combat the effects of eyestrain? Consult with professionals about a more efficient lighting system. Upgrade your computer monitors if it’s been awhile. Even helping to cover some or all of the costs associated with getting new eyeglasses for a new prescription may ultimately save you money in long-term productivity.

• Keyboard Placement

Something as ridiculously simple and cheap as changing the position of the keyboard in relation to the employee’s body can be insanely effective at increasing productivity. Once again, America’s misguided love affair with standardizing everything is the culprit. Even taking into account more ergonomic innovations during the transition, the typical office worker today will still be typing away at a computer keyboard in roughly the same position that office workers used to bang away at the keys of a typewriter. Experimenting with lowering and raising the position of the keyboard, different styles of keyboards and even the sounds that are artificially produced when a key is hit can all contribute to making computer users more efficient. Some workers–especially older employees raised on typewriters–are comforted by hearing the traditional “clicking” sound each time they hit a key while others find any sound not actually produced by fingers tapping on keys distracting.

The days of expecting maximum workplace productivity in an office by treating each employee as they were developed in some clone-producing factory is long over. Yes, of course, no business wants to spend money on personalizing the work experience when the cost of standardizing is so much more affordable.