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Dealing With RSI and Your Employer

Dealing with a repetitive strain injury as an employee isn’t always an easy task. Many employers do not have a ‘can do’ attitude, and explaining your condition, and requests to take 5 minute breaks every half hour to recover, can sometimes fall on deaf ears. After all, it reduces staff productivity for the employer.

How does RSI effect the employee?
Initially, when someone first starts experiencing the symptoms of a repetitive strain injury, it’s very difficult to diagnose exactly what’s happening. Most people will write off any mild tingling sensations or numbness as a ‘one off’. You’d be surprised at the amount of times I said to myself “Oh, it will go away in a few hours. I’ll be fine”. Unfortunately, as the condition starts to develop, the amount of pain gradually progresses, until eventual you will experience this pain every hour of every day. Failing to identify and solve the cause can lead to weeks, or even months of chronic pain and disability. It’s only then that most people decide to see their GP and get a diagnosis.

Difficulty Working
Once RSI has set in, you will find it difficult performing your usual routine at both home and in the workplace. Any hobbies you would take part in at home will stop (exercise, playing musical instruments, playing video games etc). Taking time off work for a long period of time is not always possible, taking time off work often results in a reduced wage, and with that comes worries about how you will pay the bills, or if you will have a job waiting for you when you are well enough to go back to work.

Fortunately for myself, working as a Bristol city locksmith for over 10 years at Quick Locks Locksmiths (click here), and having a strong relationship with my locksmith employer, meant that I knew my job would still be waiting for me upon my return, but for most people living pay check to pay check, taking the time out to recover is not always possible.

Take Action
You as an employee are expected to report any injuries as soon as possible to your employer. Write down any pain you experience in an accident book, and look into receiving a proper diagnosis from your GP in order to not only treat your condition, but a doctor’s diagnosis tends to be more trusted then a self-diagnosis, and will often lead to your employer being more sympathetic. We had a couple of recent cases at Quicklocks 247 at our Coventry branch where the employees were very diligent in documenting and reporting all their injuries and associated pains to the point that our employer appreciated the seriousness of the cases and took appropriate action. On the other hand, we had a case in our Nottingham branch were the employee didn’t really report or involve the employer in his experience and was therefore not taken as seriously as the other cases.

You can’t simply ignore a Repetitive Strain Injury and hope it goes away on it’s own. It requires treatment, rehabilitation and an adjustment of your lifestyle in order to recover from it.

 

Your Employer
As soon as an employee begins to experience symptoms related to RSI, there are a number of strategies that they will need to adapt. Common reasons for sweeping a repetitive strain injury under the carpet are the worry of disclosing the illness, and to keep the workplace’s accident book ‘clean’, trying to maintain favour with your employer by avoiding any potential court cases, or not wishing the company you work for to feel guilty or embarrassed for causing an employee injuries as a result of working for them, potentially tarnishing the companies image.

Be Honest About The Situation
I always recommend being truthful and not to be afraid to admit that you have any issues. At the end of the day, it’s your health that’s at stake, which should be more important than being concerned you will upset any higher ups by reporting your condition. In fact, nipping the problem in the bud can actually be beneficial for the company. Most companies have insurance, and the most effective way to reduce insurance premiums for companies is to make the number of legal cases they have as low as possible. Litigation can be very expensive for companies, especially when the employee is able to take advantage of “no win, no fee” legal services, where a company can not.

Support Your Workers
Actively encourage your staff to report any pain they are experiencing as a result of their employment, have them record in detail, exactly when and where they are experience the pain. Something called body mapping can be used for this, which is helpful in showing exactly where the pain is happening in the body. Encourage your employee to receive a professional diagnosis as soon as possible so they can get it treated before it develops into a chronic illness, and seek out a pain management program. Failure to treat the problem as soon as they can makes the condition worse, and increases the time needed to fully recover. In a nutshell, the longer you leave it, the worse it will get.

Consider Assessing The Cause
As an employer, it may be a good idea to carry out an in depth risk assessment with the employee. Look at whether they have the correct equipment, such as form fitting chairs, ergonomic keyboards etc. Ensure they aren’t being overworked or stressed out. Simply handing out a quick form with a couple of questions isn’t a very effective approach. Their workstation will need to be monitored, you will need to observe their posture, keep track of their routines and ensure the amount of work they are being expected to carry out isn’t too much.

 

Getting Them Back To Work
When a person dealing with RSI is recovering, it’s often productive to their physical and mental well being to allow them to ease back in to things upon their return. Begin with slightly shorter hours and gradually increase them over time. Allow them extended breaks, which can be shortened once they are ready to maintain the pace you are used to. This way of dealing with the problem means that not only that work is still being performed, but an experienced and valued staff member can be retained.

Who Can You Turn To For Help?
Many companies and organisations are available to assist you as both an employee or employer. The Department of Work and Pensions’ disabilities adviser is probably your best place to start. Their advisers can assist you with how to effectively assess your workplace for any risk factors, and help you secure ergonomic equipment for your staff. They can even provide funding to help cover the costs of a support worker to assist the staff member suffering from an injury.

Consider help lines for people managing RSI, who can also provide support for the employee’s family and their employer. There are many websites online available going into more detail about dealing with RSI as a UK resident, such as this one, as well as a huge library of information and advice available from the Health and Safety Executive.

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8 Tips To Prevent Repetitive Strain Injury In The Workplace

1. Use a Neutral Wrist Position When Typing

When typing for extended periods of time, such as while at work, make sure that your wrists are in a neutral position.

By a neutral position, I am referring to something like this:


Notice that the wrists are not bent in any un-natural direction, such as bent towards the little finger or bent towards the thumb. You must also take care in making sure that your wrist is not bent upwards (towards your face) which is a fairly common occurrence with desktop computers, as quite often the keyboards are not completely flat, and are instead tilted, but this can also happen just as often with laptop computers, such as in the image below…


With many people working from home these days, the temptation to work from the comfort of your sofa, or even your bed is at an all time high. Typing in any other manner than the neutral / natural writ position will put extra strain on your joints and tendons, which in turn increases your chances of sustaining a repetitive strain injury.

2. Readjust (or even replace) your keyboard

A common occurrence I see all the time is just because your keyboard has those tiny legs underneath it towards the back, that you can flip out to raise the back height of your keyboard, that this must be the correct way to have it adjusted. However, this is not the case.

The ideal keyboard would be adjusted in a way that makes it perfectly flat, or slightly below elbow level. I appreciate that this is not always easy to achieve, but you should try your best to maintain the “neutral position”. This means ensuring your keyboard or laptop is at the right height. You can even use something to boost the height of your laptop to achieve this, such as a cooling pad.

3. Beware of the mice!

It’s extremely common for people to develop a repetitive strain injury in the hand the use to control a mouse. This is typically due to the wrist being bent upwards, which can be due to the height of your chair or desk. A cheap way of solving this problem would be to invest in a gel pad mouse mat, which supports the wrist and encourages a more natural wrist and hand position when using a mouse.

4. Take a break, before your wrist does

This is one of the most commonly shared piece of advice if you are researching repetitive strain injury prevention. It happens to be one of the harder pieces of advice to stick to as well.

The medical community suggests taking a 5 min break for every half hour of on-going, repetitive activity. However, this is not always easy to remember, and let’s face it, doesn’t look great if your boss is watching. Software is available online that will remind you to take a break, which can make it easier for some to get into the habit, but you can always get up and walk around for a bit, or pop the kettle on and come back to it.

5. Posture!

It’s likely that you heard this all the time growing up from your mum. Stop slouching! and it’s actually great advice. When she was telling you this, she probably hadn’t anticipated just how many hours you’d end up spending hunched over a desk.

Having a bad posture is one of the main risk factors in relation to repetitive strain injuries, so make sure that you have the right office chair, and it is correctly adjusted so that you are sitting perfectly straight as opposed to being lent over your desk when using your keyboard.

You can also adjust the height of your monitor to ensure the screen is at eye level when sitting up straight, which will encourage you to sit up straight. If you are using a laptop, ensure the tilt / angle of your screen is ideally set, and don’t be scared to raise it if necessary.

6. Ease back into things after the holidays

Everybody  loves a good break, and a holiday gives you time to relax and recover from the daily slog, but be careful upon returning! – many people think they can just jump back to their typical work routine with no issue, but be warned that overexerting yourself can be a very bad thing.

Think of yourself as a long distance runner. You have trained your body over a period of time to carry out hundreds of delicate movements with your hands for several hours a day. Then you have a break or holiday. A week or two passes. If a long distance runner took a few months off, is it likely they will be able to perform, or run the same distance they could one or two months ago? It’s unlikely. Try not to be too hard on yourself after returning to work after going on holiday. Easy back in to things and gradually work up to your usual pace.

7. Speaking of running… try to be more healthy!

In this day and age, it’s highly unlikely that you’ve never heard this piece of advice before. Exercise and eating healthy is drilled into us almost every day it seems. But nevertheless, it would be hard to argue that it’s bad advice.

Not getting enough cardio, like cycling, swimming or even walking, will shorten your life and increase your odds of suffering from a repetitive strain injury (as well as a number of other health related issues)

It goes without saying that cardio also helps you get into shape. Overweight people are at a much higher risk of experiencing repetitive strain injuries due to the bodies muscles needing to support the additional weight on your frame. If you are extremely overweight, it can be even harder to find a comfortable neutral typing position due to way extra weight can bend the arms outwards.

8. Something to sit down and think about

Invest in a decent office chair! Take your typical 9-5 office job. You’re going to be sat in an office chair for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. If your chair fails to give you the correct support that you require, or it makes you sit in an awkward position or with bad posture, this can cause your body a great deal of issues long term.

The ideal office chair should be flexible in regards to how you can adjust it. You should be able to adjust the height, alter the height of the arm rests and back rests, and you should be able to change the tilt.

If you are going to spend 40 hours a week in this chair, then why not spend a little more than that on a decent office chair. Your body will thank you in a few years, after you helped avoid a nasty RSI.