A chief executive once told me “I will pay anything to fix it but nothing to prevent it”. We were talking about staff getting health problems from working at computers all day. You wouldn’t think that being sat down, pounding a keyboard, and pushing a mouse is actually a life threatening activity but this kind of work is the direct cause of over half of all the people off sick in the UK today.

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.

Much research has been done to demonstrate the size and seriousness of the issue. The Chartered Institute of Personnel Development, the Chartered Society of Physiotherapists, and the Health & Safety Executive, have all published detailed accounts on the subject. Mostly the concerns are about Musculo Skeletal Disorders or MSDs or back pain to you and me, Repetitive Strain Injury RSI, whiplash, and a wide range of other conditions including, De Quervain’s syndrome, golfers elbow, carpal tunnel syndrome, tendinitis, tennis elbow, tenosynovitis, etc.

“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.

Your organisation very likely has a healthcare programme, safety training, fire extinguishers, and security systems all of which are there for “in case” something bad happens.” So why don’t employers do a bit more to make workstations easier to use and less damaging for employees?

Organisations have measured the costs but got wrong outputs. Getting all of the sum of the wages, additional workload of employees and the missed opportunity, prevention will earn more than not working. E-bay, Visa and HP who has their own say in their field, the enhancement of their productivity has been positively credited having reduced their costs because of the absence of the employee.

Case studies are now available that can demonstrate that organisations adopting a properly planned programme of office ergonomics, education, and the right equipment can expect an ROI within 2 years, a massive drop in problems with high-risk workers and a lot more money in the bank. For those better performing CEOs the statement is now “I paid to prevent it and now have no problem to fix!

The author, Paul Goddard is the UK’s foremost expert on assistive technology for people with RSI and his company, Keytools provides ergonomic keyboards and mice to assist with the prevention of RSI.