More Staff at Work More of the Time
I was at a meeting of chief executives recently discussing health problems arising from computer use. One CEO said he didn’t mind paying to fix problems but would not pay to prevent them. It was alarming to discover that intensive use of computers was actually the most common cause of absence from work in the UK.
All too often it seems that employers will prefer to pay out only after the problem has happened rather than prevent it in the first place. If they thought about it a bit more it is obvious that this strategy doesn’t add up.
There is plenty of research data which shows the scale and cost of the problem. The Chartered Society of Physiotherapists, the Health & Safety Executive, and the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development, produce regular reports. Musculo Skeletal Disorders or MSDs are the main problem. This includes back pain, Repetitive Strain Injury RSI, whiplash, and many other conditions including, tenosynovitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, tendinitis, tennis elbow, golfers elbow, De Quervain’s syndrome, and many more.
“You don’t need to live with this waste of time, money, and people” says Paul Goddard, RSI expert and education officer at Keytools. “For example, you wear a seatbelt to prevent a possible injury, it won’t help after the event!” There are plenty of other strategies that companies put in place as preventative measures.
These days, most organisations have a good programme of employee healthcare providing lots of good advice. Safety issues are taken seriously and every possible risk is minimised such as provision of fire extinguishers, safety training and so on. So why do workstations get ignored when clearly they are a major issue for the workforce and the company?
It looks like many organisations have calculated the costs and obtained wrong results. If you get the sum of the wages, the wasted opportunity and the added work of the fellow worker, the bill for not working can be gained more than the prevention. Top organizations like Visa, HP and E-bay, that have utilized a their own position, the reality is their productivity improvements has been beneficial having cut their costs because of workers absence.
In some case studies, organisations that have planned programme of office ergonomics and using of right equipments can feel within 2 years of return of investment. CEOs now can be proud and say that “I have no worries to fix because I paid to prevent!
Paul Goddard is the UK’s foremost expert on assistive technology for people with RSI and his company, Keytools provides a large range of ergonomic keyboards and mice to assist with the prevention of RSI.
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