osteohealth

Pain costs

Back pain is the leading cause of absence in British business, according to the Office of National Statistics. In 2006/7 over 15 million days were lost because of it.

Add in neck, shoulder, elbow, wrist, hip, knee and ankle pain – examples of conditions which Osteohealth can treat – and the total rises to over 28 million lost days (Health and Safety Executive)

Of course, each company’s experience is different. But the average number of days absent for each employee in the UK due to the conditions mentioned totals more than 7 per annum (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, CIPD)

In a company with 100 staff that means more than 700 lost days. In a company with 500 employees, it’s a startling 3,500 lost days.

Lost profits
Some rough arithmetic will soon tell you the kind of losses this means. Obviously, the cost of a lost day varies from employee to employee and company to company. But a not untypical cost of £500 per day per employee means a loss of £350,000 for a company with 100 employees, and no less than £1.75 million for a company with 500 employees.

Even at a very conservative cost of £200 per day per employee, the sums lost would be respectively £140,000 and £700,000.

Almost needless to say, in companiess where an employee’s time is costed at £1,000 per day or more, the losses are much greater.

Further losses
But even the alarming sums so far are only part of the picture. The CIPD records complete days absent from work – but many people miss part of a day while they obtain treatment. This represents an additional loss but is often not even recorded as absence because the employee is not away for a full day.

Secondly, many people suffering either acute or chronic pain worked with reduced effectiveness. This is hard to quantify but, as a rough guide, if a company were to have just five people working at only 75% of their capacity each day, that amounts to another 150 days lost each year.

At a cost of £200 per person per day, that’s a loss of £30,000; at £500 per person per day, a loss of over £75,000

Increased workload for others
Finally, in this calculation, we should mention that someone being absent normally throws an extra workload on colleagues who are at work, which increases their stress level.

Unfortunately, we cannot immediately cure all of the musculo-skeletal problems mentioned. But you don’t need to be a mathematical genius to work out that preventing problems which arise and treating them quickly and effectively on site when they do arise can produce big savings for your company.

Which is where Osteohealth comes into the equation.