During the past decade, virtual reality (VR) technology has been de-veloped rapidly. Many applications of VR are ranging from non-immersive, semi-immersive, and full immersive types that are widely used by researchers to overcome problems in various fields. In industrial field, the most common application of VR technologies is at the planning stage and design of facilities or workplaces. By using VR, we can evaluate workplace design from the as-pects of ergonomics and work productivity. This paper gives a literature review on the current VR applications in ergonomic and productive workplace design over the past 10 years (2010-2019). The main discussions of this paper include research objects, research outputs, types of VR technologies, hardwares and softwares that are used for analysis. The result of this study shows that the ap-plication of VR is very helpful to evaluate and validate the design of workplace, before the final design is implemented in real world. This paper also discusses several ongoing questions and future challenges for researchers who are con-cerned to apply VR in industrial workplace design.