Early intervention is always the best medicine and especially in the case of preventing RSIs (repetitive strain injuries) or MSDs (musculo-skeletal disorders) as OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) likes to call them.

If preventing computer related pains and strains is a goal of yours then these 3 things need to be part of your strategy:

1. Identify employees who are high risk of injury or currently in discomfort (pre-injury phase)
You must identify those employees who are at risk of developing a computer related injury. If you are to pre-empt injuries and reduce costly workers' comp claims than identifying the individuals who already show pre-injury signs like generalized tension and discomfort in the upper extremity must be a priority. Moreover, identification of high risk job tasks such as CAD and software engineers as well as those employees who spend greater than 8 hours/day on the computer is crucial information to gather when implementing injury prevention strategies.

Two Worlds Workplace does this for you through our proprietary software ErgoAlly. Among the many tools that help you automate your Ergonomics program, increase its efficiency and effectiveness and capture real time ROI data our Risk Assessment Survey tool allows you to identify those employees and job tasks at most risk of injury in order to prioritize your time and treasure.

2. Change the offending behavior(s)
No amount of medical intervention or therapy will be successful long term if the causal factors are not remedied. You could have the best therapy and medical intervention in the world but if the employee goes right back to doing the same things that got them into therapy in the first place any progress the therapist made at reducing the employees pain will be short lived and the pain will return. However, once your medical team makes some headway alleviating the pain you can keep it away by helping the employee stop the offending behaviors that caused the pain in the first place. In fact, medical intervention, would not even be necessary if the employee in pain was diligent about stopping these offending behaviors and developing some awareness of their bodies tension. Unfortunately, my 20 years of experience has taught me that set behaviors that are deeply ingrained, like mousing and keyboarding, tend to stay ingrained unless considerable effort and diligence is applied. With that said, pain is a great motivator and those in pain or those that have had pain in the past are usually the most compliant when it comes to changing their behaviors.

I realized long ago that while optimizing the workstations and behaviors of employees is critical it is not enough to make real change. A one hour educational visit is rarely enough intervention to undo years and decades of bad habits. This is why I created my exclusive "Stand by Me" program that every one of my Ergonomic Assessments, that are performed for employees that are contracted with Two Worlds Workplace, comes with. It is an automated follow-up and behavioral change program that helps your employees change their behaviors by providing them with the tools they need to take charge of their own body. Our exclusive break-timer software, reminder emails, push notifications and "Tips and Tricks" content are geared to help the employee take responsibility of their own health and address their specific challenges. By providing consistent follow-up and messaging to your employees over time you increase the likelihood of transforming your company's culture from tired and painful to healthy and productive while putting real action to your safety and wellness objectives.

3. Stop the runaway “Tension Train”
For sedentary and static job tasks like computer work the biggest problem is the non-doing things rather than the doing of things. Meaning one of the most important casual factors of computer pain is the poising of the hand in a static position creating the cascade of physiological responses that result in pain, loss of productivity and expensive medical intervention. Therefore, it is imperative that if you want to prevent computer related pains and strains addressing this causal factor needs to be a priority. While their is no conclusive evidence as to what causes computer related injuries like Lateral Epicondylosis (Tennis Elbow) I believe the evidence is pretty clear that scar tissue is the main culprit. While the formation of scar tissue is pretty technical I believe its formation comes down to the algorithm below.

Tension | Fatigue | Micro-Tears | Scar Tissue | * Vasculo-Neural In-Growth | Pain and Loss of Strength
* It is these musculo-tendinous pathologies that create pain and loss of strength. See the research and education section for more information on the medical pathologies associated with computer related injuries.

So as you can see if you stop the creation of tension in the muscles you stop the pain.

Two Worlds Workplace offers "Tension Busting" programs like our Stand-by-Me behavioral modification program, StressWell Workshops, Group Micro-Break and Onsite Therapy programs that instantly reduces tension in the upper extremity and stops the Tension Train before it can creates full blown injuries, pain and disability.

Connect with us on facebook or click the Schedule A Consultation link to see if Two Worlds Workplace is a fit to help your team remain pain free and productive.