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Trend

Remote work-induced back pain

It’s no surprise that remote work is on the rise. The pandemic forced employers’ hands to allow all of their employees to work from home or risk shutting down for the foreseeable future.

But employers had no reason to worry about falling productivity after all. The Hill reported that “remote employees work longer and harder,” with a popular study on Microsoft showing that remote work boosted work hours by an average of 10%.

There are a few reasons for this:

• No commutes: Globally, remote workers saved an average of 72 minutes a day without the need to commute. They spent about half an hour of that extra time to work—2 extra working hours per week.

• Higher productivity: “An oft-cited, pre-pandemic study of workers in a Chinese travel agency found a 13 percent boost in performance for home workers. They worked more hours per shift, and each hour was a bit more productive.” Read More.

• Less Water Cooler Talk: “Those who work from home talk less to coworkers, whether or not it’s work-related.”

The preference for remote work isn’t slowing down anytime soon. According to Gallup, 94% of employees want some type of hybrid or fully remote option.

However, employees not having teammates watching them has led to another epidemic: Lower back pain.

Part of the reason could be from bad posture whilst sitting and working. Another could be the extended hours. Regardless, the human body was built to stand upright, and sitting for extended hours every day can cause the discs in your vertebrae to lose their cushioning.

While this isn’t a groundbreaking discovery or a new problem that we’re running into, there are still a few ways to capitalize on this:

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