Employees
Many of us spend at least a third of our day at work and it is therefore not surprising that work has a large impact on our health and wellbeing. Research has shown that in the majority of cases work is beneficial to your health and being out of work often triggers negative feelings and even ill-health. There is no doubt that back pain can interfere with your job, but in many cases back pain is not caused by work.Work should be part of your back pain management. Below you can find more information on the benefits of work, the people and organisations that can help you with returning to or remaining at work and some practical tips on implementing this information.
You can read the whole text or jump to specific sections by clicking on the following titles:
- The benefits of work
- You are not alone
-
How to remain at or return to work ?
- Communication and co-operation
- Sick leave
- Communication and co-operation
The fact that work is actually beneficial to your health and wellbeing may sound strange, especially when you are struggling to do your job because of back pain, but it makes sense if you look at what benefits work can actually give you:
- Colleagues can give you support and help in coping with back pain and any other problem you
may face. Such support may be more difficult to get if you stay at home and are dependent on people
coming to you.
- Work provides you with an income for you and your family.
- Work gives you the opportunity to learn new skills and mastering new skills gives you a sense of
achievement. This is important in feeling good about yourself.
- Work is part of the staying active regime that is so important when experiencing back pain
- Work helps to promote recovery and rehabilitation, not only for back pain but also for other
health conditions that you may experience.
- And there may be many more benefits that you have experienced yourself...
These benefits are not only important to you as an employee, but also to your employer. After all a healthy and happy employee is of much more value than an unmotivated employee. It is therefore important to realise that you are not on your own when you are trying to cope with back pain at work. There is a whole list of people who want to see you at work, not only because they care about you, but also because there are a number of benefits for them in doing this. You can think of:
- Your employer:
clearly the organisation that you work for would prefer to have productive employees. They hired you in the first place because you had the skills, knowledge and experience that the organisation needed. These skills, knowledge and experience have not been lost now you have back pain so the organisation will try to accommodate your needs in order to continue to benefit from your knowledge. In the vast majority of cases the amount of resources needed to accommodate you will by far outweigh the costs of hiring and training a new employee.
- Your colleagues:
we all know how difficult it is when someone at work is on holiday or on sick leave. Not only does the workload increase, you are also missing a part of the organisation’s skills, knowledge and experience. No doubt your colleagues would prefer you to continue doing at least some of your tasks than you to go on sick leave completely.
- Your GP
and other healthcare providers; your health is the main concern of your GP. He or she is there to help you to control any health problems you may have and to ensure that you can continue doing the things you would like to do. Discuss with your GP the impact your back pain has on your work, ask for guidance on what you cannot do but more importantly ask for guidance on what you can do.
As you have seen from the above, using work to benefit your health should be a team effort. What is your responsibility in this and what can you expect from the other teams players such as your employer and your GP?
Traditionally back pain has often been associated with certain activities such as repetitive heavy lifting, bending and awkward postures. These factors certainly play a role and simple measures can reduce these risk factors. However there are also others factors that you may not directly associate with your back but have proven to be very important in keeping persons with back pain at work. You can think of support and understanding from your manager and colleagues, your state of mind when you experience back pain and relevant policies and services at the organisation you work for. Your chances of remaining at or returning to work are much better if all these factors are addressed.
The first thing to do when back pain hampers your work is to see if you can change your work to better suit the ability of your body. You can think of very simple measures or more widespread changes, depending on what you think would work best for you and your organisation. Examples of adaptations include:
- Changes to how you do things at work.
For example; have you been using lifting and handling aids when moving heavy or large items? Do you think you can benefit from (more) training to use such tools? Many office workers rely heavily on email and telephone to stay in contact with others, even colleagues who may be working in the same building. Why not walk over to them and tell what you wanted to email initially? Such a short break from your desk work can do wonders for your comfort.
- Changes to what you do at work.
If certain activities give you more discomfort than others, you may be able to agree with your line manager a temporary change in your duties. If heavy lifting makes your back pain worse, why not ask if you could do some other tasks until your back pain has disappeared?
- Changes to your work environment.
Is your work environment adequately set up? This is not only important for office workers, but also for people doing manual jobs. Can you make some changes to limit repetitive heavy lifting or bending?
- Changes to your working hours.
Many people with back pain find that they can work for a certain period but then the pain gets very bad and they need to stop. Instead of ceasing all your work, why not agree temporary changes in your working hours? If you are working part-time, you may be able to spread your working hours over more days. Full-timers may want to agree a temporary reduction in working hours; this is still better than going on sick leave completely!
- Wise use of (mini)-breaks.
A 15-minute coffee break can be used to do some stretches, go for a short walk or at least do something that is completely different from what you are doing all day. Even a short 1-minute stretch every half hour can be a welcome break.
Communication and co-operation
People have found that it is best to be very open about how your back pain affects your work. Effective communication is essential, not only with your line-manager but you may also want to brief your colleagues so they know why you are doing the things you do. Your organisation may also employ health & safety professionals, occupational health providers or other qualified HR professionals. These people are there to assist you and your manager in reducing health risks and accommodating any reasonable needs you may have.
If you have any doubts about what you can and cannot do as a result of your back pain, you are recommended to visit your GP or occupational health professional. He or she will be in the best position to assess to what extent your health condition affects your functioning. However, he or she may not be familiar with your specific tasks at work so it is important that you give this information. Before you visit your GP write down your key activities and describe how your back pain affects these activities. You will see that if you go to your GP prepared you can get much more information out of a 10-minute consultation than if you go unprepared.
Sick leave
Sick leave was traditionally seen as something that was needed to promote recovery from back pain. However we now know much more about how sick leave affects health and well being and it has become clear that in some cases sick leave is actually detrimental to recovery.
It is therefore important to discuss the options that you have with your GP and employer. As explained above there may be options to temporarily adapt your work instead of going on sick leave. If you have to take some sick leave, it is preferable to try to limit the duration of sick leave as much as possible. To do this it may be useful to regularly review your status, not only with your GP but also with your employer. By keeping your employer informed you are more likely to be able to return as soon as possible. For example you employer may have some other duties that need to be done and it may very well be possible that you can take on board those duties instead of the activities you used to do.