Home/ Blog

13/10/10 Are you sitting comfortably?

It’s Back Care Awareness Week…. Before reading on, are you sitting comfortably?

Backache is the cause of one in six days off work and about one in three Britons will suffer from it during their lifetime.  Whilst there are many contributing factors to spinal health, our change in working habits and lifestyle have to be the greatest contributors to back pain and injury.

There is no getting away from it…. we all do alot of it….. sitting down….

As PC use has increased  and expanded (or is that shrunk) in the shape of laptops, netbooks and tablets, the potential to be glued to a screen while not giving a second thought to your eyes or posture is  a recipe for problems.

Hopefully everyone has a certain level of personal responsibility and in turn an awareness of bad habits and/or recognition of ailments as they arise.

Employers also have a responsibility of care to their employees.  This is not just reinforced by recommended standards or guide lines but by the legality of the The Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipment) Regulations Act. Compliance to this is vital to ensure any organisation doesn’t fall fowl of HSE fines or employee litigation.

Naturally computers are all over the workplace from the common open plan office to the white van man’s spare seat.

People’s exposure needs recognising, assessing and recording to fully comply with the standards.  Of course this is time consuming, but help is at hand with our online DSE Assessment.  It is easy to reach out to all members of your workforce and as our system is web based so there is no intrusion on your companies IT system and is accessible wherever you have an internet connection (useful for home workers with a bespoke module).

This isn’t a box ticker; problems can be identified and solved via the program, there is a built in library of potential solutions and self help topics.  It can educate your staff to understand better workstation practices.

Graphically pleasing and with a start to finish time of approximately 10 minutes, getting staff to complete your DSE requests is a doddle.  The back-end dash board sees the administrators take a sigh of relief.  All elements are managed here, from assessment requests and reminders, reported problems, and full management reporting.   Of course if further action is needed we can send in a either a ergonomist  or a physiotherapist depending on the issue.  All in all a  tidy solution to ensure compliance and maintain the wellbeing of your PC users.

For further information on our DSE Assessment Software please click here