Workplace muscle bone and joint guidance

Problems with muscles, bones and joints can have a huge impact on a person’s quality of life as well as their ability to work. These conditions can affect anyone, but they often occur at work as a result of workplace injuries, inactivity or poor posture.

Where do I start?

• Understand the impact of musculoskeletal health in your workplace.
• Identify the extent of muscle, bone and joint issues in your organisation.
• Understand obligations relating to risk assessment and safety committee regulations. 

Around 1 in 10 UK employees have a musculoskeletal condition,³ so it’s inevitable that some of your people will experience some type of muscle, bone or joint pain during their working lives. When it comes to managing MSK health, you need to reduce the risk of injuries and ensure the correct assessment procedures are in place.

Improvement through regular exercise 

Musculoskeletal conditions can reduce strength and limit mobility at any age, but they often develop over time. This can be as the result of general wear and tear, repetitive movements, inactivity or lifestyle factors, so one thing that can help significantly improve muscle, bone and joint health is exercise.

Exercise helps to keep bones healthy, joints flexible and muscles strong. Moving more in everyday life also helps with posture and overall health, which can lead to many positive long and short-term health benefits. By enabling and encouraging your people to incorporate exercise and movement into their work and home lives, you can help reduce the risk of musculoskeletal disorders and enable them to enjoy a more pain-free life, both in and out of work.

_{3. Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) – Workplace health: applying All Our Health}

Where and how we work can have a significant influence on our musculoskeletal health, as well as general physical and mental wellbeing. For example, in more manual roles, heavy lifting can lead to a sore back or pulled muscles, while working with certain substances or equipment can affect health or pose a greater injury risk.

Your line managers can be the point of contact for employees who  get ill or are suffering from poor health, but they can’t be expected to know what to do in every circumstance, so a good place to start is to invest in line-manager training and advice for your business.

Corporate health assessments
Putting regular workplace assessments in place could also help your organisation support individuals in all aspects of their health, including physical health concerns.  They enable your employees to see where to focus their efforts with small manageable steps to a healthier them.

Muscle bones and joint pain can have a detrimental effect on someone’s mental health, particularly if it is prolonged pain.  Office of Health Improvement & Disparities data for 2022 shows that people are more likely to self-report mental health conditions if they also suffer from musculoskeletal conditions.⁵
Poor mental health could also impact a person’s ability to deal with an MSK problem, backed up by another study from Versus Arthritis which found "relationships can also be reciprocal, including where chronic pain worsens mental health, and poor mental health worsens chronic pain.”⁶
As mental health and musculoskeletal disorders are among the leading causes of sickness absence in the UK1 it could be advantageous to consider them both together in workplace health support.

<sub>5. OHID data 2022  - Musculoskeletal health local profiles: short commentary, March 2023 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
6. Versus Arthritis 2023 - The State of Musculoskeletal Health 2023 (pdf)</sub>