Back Pain Relief Saves Your Business Money

Back pain relief for staff makes good business sense-- provided the pain relief is effective in the medium and long term. This page analyses how much money businesses are effectively throwing away when they needlessly pay staff to stay away from work due to back pain.

The intangibles are potentially immense with back pain, because backs are so vital to our well-being, and affect our functioning so deeply. More on that later.

But let's look first at the tangible costs of back pain. When your staff take time off sick, the reason is usually back pain. That is a fact that varies little across the western world: back pain is the most common reason for people to approach a medical professional.

In the population at large, men take off an average of 2 days off per year from back pain, and women take an average of 2.6 days.

But 10% of the population take a median of 36 days off per year for back pain, and those suffering back pain are disproportionately (77%) in the most economically productive (and highly paid) age-group, those between 30 and 60 years of age.

Here's a first estimate of the cost to an organisation of lower back pain.

These figures are based on an Australian study (BF Walker et al., Low Back Pain in Australian Adults: The Economic Burden, Asia Pac J Public Health 2003; 15; 79) that corresponds closely to studies in the US and the UK. The figures assume that you are an "average" Australian organisation with a national average distribution of male and female workers (49% male, 51% female.) To get a more accurate picture of your own organisation, more detail is almost certainly needed.

The more specific sums for a business are reasonably simple. How many days off sick do your valuable staff members take off each year? Then, take an effective long-term back pain intervention, compute its cost per session, and the time-cost (time off work) of sessions with the therapist. Use results from a well-designed scientific survey to set expectations for the back pain treatment, and determine savings.

Here's a table based on the Alexander Technique, a well-known educational and behavioural approach to back pain which has excellent long-term research results:

(Employee worth is the contribution the employee makes to the business. It can be calculated as Gross Profit divided by No of employees.)

These figures are based on conservative estimates:

• The company pays the full price of the Alexander Technique lessons
• Alexander Technique lesson cost is $66
• The lessons take place in the workplace (no rental costs), during work time
• There are 6 lessons per employee
• time off work for lessons is factored into the cost.
• There is a well-designed study (the ATEAM trial at Southampton University, published in the British Medical Journal) that shows days of back pain per month is reduced by 48% after 6 lessons, and that the 48% reduction in days of back pain persists for at least a year (the study measured no further than one year)

I have designed a spreadsheet model that you're welcome to use to analyse your own situation. It performs the calculations above, amongst others, and you can check my working (feedback gratefully received!) Please get in touch and I'll send it to you.

Intangible Back Pain Costs

There are people with hand pain and other kinds of repetitive strain injury who actually have a back problem. There are people who feel tired or depressed who actually have a back problem. There are staff who are under-performing, not because they are malingerers, but because there's something (undiagnosed) wrong with their back. There are people who take time off for migraines who really have a back problem.

And then there's the problem of presenteeism: the people who show up at work, but are feeling so bad that they're less productive than they could be. (These are often people who are hard-working, conscientious, high-quality employees, sometimes called "Type A Personalities." Some of them can develop severe problems if they persist in coming to work when they're not fit.)

It's hard to put figures on all these intangibles, but it has sometimes been done. At Victorinox, makers of Swiss Army Knives and Kitchenware, Alexander Technique lessons given to the whole workforce produced productivity gains of 42%. At Victorinox they were not focussing on alleviating back pain, and this figure is likely to be a combination of back pain and other productivity gains, tangible and intangible.