We undertake hundreds of DSE risk assessment on behalf of clients and find that the key failing in businesses is:

Not training staff to understand the risks.

Many of the assessments we are called upon to undertake are those where a serious problem has already manifested itself and the employee is already suffering.

Only this week an assessment in London was on a woman who had developed many poor practices over a number of years; including:

• Perching on the end of her seat;
• Twisting her body to see a second computer screen;
• Not taking sufficient breaks;
• And not making the necessary adjustments to her workstation set up.

All of the above has led to her suffering with severe lower back pain and the need to seek physiotherapy help.  Our task was to help identify what workstation changes could be recommended to help to manage her longer term health.

The problem is like that of so many other computer users we see – this woman had not been trained properly in the first place and had not recognised the risks.  With this type of injury, problems tend to slowly creep up on people without them realising (often seen as a slow burn injury) and once pain is evident much needs to be done to rectify the problems.

It would be so much better and cost-effective to address the training issues at the outset; but many businesses fail to recognise this.  Please don`t let this happen in your business.