Rise in back pain and long-term sickness linked to home working – ONS

[Northerner]

Anybody who emerged from the Covid-19 lockdowns with a frozen shoulder or a neck crick after spending hours hunched over their laptop at the kitchen table would be painfully aware of the dangers of working from home.

Now the nation’s number crunchers have provided evidence that remote working may be partly to blame for the UK’s chronic labour shortage, with tens of thousands of extra people reporting as long-term sick due to lockdown related injuries.

In a sign that poor ergonomics can have an impact on economics, the Office for National Statistics found a big rise in the number of people being unfit for work because of neck and back injuries. Overall, the ONS said the number of people identified as economically inactive because of long-term sickness had increased from 2 million to 2.5 million in the three years from 2019, with more than 70% of the rise – 363,000 – occurring after the arrival of Covid in early 2020.

Rise in back pain and long-term sickness linked to home working – ONS

Poor ergonomics contributed to number of ‘economically inactive’ people and to UK’s labour shortage

www.theguardian.com

 

[Inka]

So true! I’ve had horrible neck and shoulder problems since working from home. There should be a duty on employers to provide correct equipment, including proper desks and good quality fully adjustable chairs.

 

[EmmaL76]

The trick is to keep your monitor at eye line but it can be impossible to do sometimes. Office work has always given me horrible shoulder pain, like a pulling muscle spasm type of pain. Other things can do it to like ironing, walking on the treadmill and not looking straight but at Netflix on my phone. If you don’t hunch it stops it, but you don’t realise you are till it’s too late. I’ve tried different chairs, kneeling stools, working standing up even this thing that looks like a harness. Nothing really works so I decided not to…. Work that is Although I will be in the new year… just not office work

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

So true! I’ve had horrible neck and shoulder problems since working from home. There should be a duty on employers to provide correct equipment, including proper desks and good quality fully adjustable chairs.

To their credit, DUK made sure everyone did a little refresher on how to set up and organise a healthy and effective working-from-home space. I work from home all the time, so it wasn’t really needed in my case, but it was a good set of practical pointers.

 

[Inka]

The trick is to keep your monitor at eye line but it can be impossible to do sometimes. Office work has always given me horrible shoulder pain, like a pulling muscle spasm type of pain. Other things can do it to like ironing, walking on the treadmill and not looking straight but at Netflix on my phone. If you don’t hunch it stops it, but you don’t realise you are till it’s too late. I’ve tried different chairs, kneeling stools, working standing up even this thing that looks like a harness. Nothing really works so I decided not to…. Work that is Although I will be in the new year… just not office work

Total sympathy @EmmaL76 Yes, I know the tricks because when I worked in an office we had someone come round and check our sitting position, monitor height, etc. At home, with a crushed dining table, a cheap chair and a tiny laptop, I can’t replicate that. All employers should be obliged to provide suitable equipment and do an assessment if necessary to see what’s needed. Even with a separate monitor, it’s impossible to get things right.

 

[42istheanswer]

We were sent an assessment to do for our work space at home, and I was given permission to bring an adjustable chair home from the office (even in the deepest first lockdown I had to occasionally go into the office to deposit confidential waste for shredding and pick up fresh notebooks etc).

 

[Bruce Stephens]

We were sent an assessment to do for our work space at home, and I was given permission to bring an adjustable chair home from the office (even in the deepest first lockdown I had to occasionally go into the office to deposit confidential waste for shredding and pick up fresh notebooks etc).

Most of us already worked some of the time at home, but when the office closed for the pandemic we were given advice and an offer of money for whatever seemed useful.