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Back Pain - Work and Back Pain

Long - term unemployment can be a serious consequence of  back pain. Your employer and you play a very important role in keeping you at work.

Report back pain to your employer and to your safety representative if there is one in your workplace.

Planned return to work

  1. Talk to your employer and safety representative about ways to ensure safe return to work.
  2. Develop a plan for progressive return to work as your physical work capacity improves.
  3. Your employer may be able to put you in touch with occupational health support.
  4. For more information on this please see the Advice for Employers pages.

Changes to work activities

  • It is important to work with your employer to enable a return to work.

Helpful strategies for return to work may include:

  1. Suggesting alternatives and rotation between activities - this may help an early return to normal work.
  2. Reducing the duration of work for the first few week - this may help reduce risk of further pain.
  3. Working a half normal shift (about 4 hours at first) - this may improve pain tolerance.

What your employer can do to help

Your employer has to protect the health and safety of their workforce by law. They must:

  1. Perform risk assessments and put in place reasonable measures to reduce that risk;
  2. Provide information and training about safe ways of work;
  3. Act on any reports of ill health caused by work. If a worker returns after sick leave, the employer needs to make sure that the worker’s health is not made worse by work;
  4. Make changes to work environment and work style as far as is practical;
  5. Provide equipment to assist in your duties;
  6. Provide reasonable adjustments to the workplace if a worker is disabled under the definition in the Disability Discrimination Act.
  7. Consider basic ‘health promotion in the workplace’ tips e.g. walk or cycle to work schemes.


Next: Off work and suffering back pain

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