ViewSonic @Work @Risk survey, February 2007

Of 1500 UK computer workers surveyed:

• 77% of workers suffer eye fatigue, 71% suffer back pain, 67% suffer headaches
• 79% of 16-24-year-olds complain of eye fatigue, 80% have back pain
• High workloads prevent 31% of workers taking breaks
• 47% of employees haven't received ergonomic training
• 69% of employees would consider suing their employer over health issues
• Amongst 16-24 year olds, 80% report back pain, 76% report headaches

Over 50% of employees say they forget or don't have time to take breaks from the computer, despite it being a requirement of the 1992 Display Screen Equipment (DSE) Regulations that you should have sufficient breaks

UK Health and Safety Executive report

"Better Display Screen Equipment (DSE) work-related ill health data" is an HSE report prepared by the Institute of Occupational Medicine in 2007

The report found that 73% of computer workers suffer musculoskeletal symptoms each year

Musculoskeletal disorders cause 0.85 lost days per computer worker in the UK, although the overwhelming majority of sufferers never take any time off. Most absences appear to be due to around 4-5% of employees taking an average 19 days off sick

Based on the average salary, this is equivalent to a direct loss of £100 per year for each and every employee, although in fact most surveys suggest that the true cost of absences is normally 2-3 times the direct cost

The HSE report does not make any attempt to quantify the hidden costs of underperformance amongst the remaining 67-68% of musculoskeletal sufferers who do not take sick leave

Academic studies

(Suparna K, Sharma AK, Khandekar, J, 2005) studied 200 IT professionals in the Delhi region, and found 77.5% suffered from musculoskeletal problems such as back pain, neck pain, shoulder pain or repetitive stain injury (RSI), and 76% with eye fatigue and other visual problems. They describe these figures as evidence of a growing epidemic that has appeared from nowhere in a short space of time with the rapid development of the IT industry in India, with the potential to drastically affect the growth of the industry as professionals will be unable to work due to such problems.

(Cook, Burgess-Limerick and Chang 2000) studied 270 clerical, technical, call-centre and managerial staff in 15 Australian companies, and found that 76% had experienced neck pain and upper limb pain that they felt was due to computer use in the past year, with 46% reporting symptoms in the past week.

(Evans and Patterson 2000) focused specifically on professional and managerial rather than clerical staff. Amongst 170 subjects in Hong Kong companies, 65% reported musculoskeletal pain.

A recent study of over 4000 11-15 year-old Scottish schoolchildren by the University of Edinburgh found that 15% of regular computer users and gamers reported suffering frequent back pain, 40% neck pain or shoulder pain, and 60% headaches

Another study of Finnish schoolchildren (Mikkelsson et al 1997) aged 9-12 suffer musculoskeletal pain found that a third suffered musculoskeletal pain on a weekly basis.

Etcom People Engineers
Expert posture trainers (ergonomic consultancy/physiotherapists). Surveyed 320 computer users over last couple of years. Not very scientific, but found around 75% reported work-related pain. When asked How efficiently are you working as a result of your pain?, the average response was 92% efficient - i.e. 8% down on how they believe they would work if pain free. If this is true, this is equivalent to around 20 lost working days of effort per employee per year!

Health and Safety Executive statistics
Main statistic is from 1995 - estimate of 12.3 million working days lost due to back pain and other musculoskeletal disorders, at cost to UK businesses of £5.7bn

Workforce in 1995 was about 26 million, so £5.7bn/26m = £220 per employee, per year.

Average cost of each case of MSD absence: 10 working days, and over £5000 (including physio costs etc). £5.7bn/5000 = 1.14 million people. 1.14m/26m = 4.4% of the workforce

The £5.7bn figure is probably an underestimate of costs of absences: MSDs are the second most common cause of absences, after stress, and cause around 40% of absences. £220 is around 40% of the CBI estimates of annual absence costs of around £475 per employee per year (equivalent to around 8 days lost per employee).

However, the HSE have suggested that the true cost of absences, if you include the costs such as physio, getting in temporary staff, reduced morale amongst covering staff, damage to the business etc, is around £1600 per employee per year. This would suggest that the true cost of MSD absences is around £640 per employee per year