Office workers 'more susceptible' to posture problems
British workers who find themselves deskbound for the majority of the day are becoming more susceptible to posture-related health problems, one sector commentator has claimed.
Office-based employees who are considering taking out private health insurance may be interested to hear the opinion of Karl Monahan, business development manager at the On Site Massage Company, who said that he was now seeing cases of 21st century-specific conditions such as 'BlackBerry thumb', and 'mouse elbow'.
"With computers getting smaller and people spending more time at their desks they are becoming more susceptible to things like this," he explained.
Mr Monahan added that companies were now starting to realise the risks posed by traditional office practices - health problems which may include repetitive strain injury.
He concluded that such businesses were now beginning to do something about this and were moving in the right direction.
The cost of providing employee healthcare benefits rose by an average of five per cent per employee across Europe in 2007, according to Mercer's Pan-European health benefits report.
Furthermore, the study also found that an average of 5.3 per cent of a company's total payroll costs was spent on health benefits for staff.
Yet despite the rising costs, many firms plan to maintain their health and benefit programmes. 
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