Legal Implications on
Keyboard
Use
Cartoon by:
Ian
West Cartoons
A Simple Cure?
It makes
sound economic sense for Human Resource Departments to
buy a Maltron fully ergonomic keyboard for anybody
starting to suffer from CTS (Carpal Tunnel Syndrome) or
other RSI (Repetative Strain Injury) associated with
keyboard use.
Kath S. from
a Shropshire solicitors bought one for litigation
assistant Karen Morris who was suffering from carpal
tunnel syndrome in both wrists. She encouraged Karen to
persevere in spite of the “strange” shape of the Maltron
keyboard. Six weeks later Karen no longer needed her
wrist braces and reported “I enjoy typing again, and the
best benefit is no pain. Not one days pain since using
the keyboard, which is amazing”
This decision
by a Human Resource department to try out a simple
“cure” for keyboard-induced pain has avoided time off
work, injections, physiotherapy and even surgery. It has
shown the most cost-effective way to keep an expensively
trained skilled keyboard operator as an active staff
member, and at the same time remove the risk of a
compensation claim.
This change
to using a Maltron keyboard has been effective in
thousands of cases so far, and has enabled Duty of Care
in its widest interpretation. Care for the person. Care
for the company’s reputation as an employer, and care
for the bottom line.
The Real Cost of RSI and other Disabling Injuries.
It costs
all of us UK taxpayers around £160,000 when someone in the prime
of life is struck down with a disability, stops work and has to
be cared for by the state for, say, twenty years. But this money
is saved when the individual concerned gets back to work. Indeed
one organisation, Ability Net, got thirty disabled people back to
work in 1998 at a cost of no more than £7,000 and in doing so
saved taxpayers a cool £5m. Not forgetting the social benefits
of having thirty self confident people back as net contributors
to society instead of feeling a burden to the state!
Extrapolating
these figures with respect to the Maltron ergonomically
designed keyboard over the last twenty years, Stephen Hobday
thinks that he has saved the taxpayers over £100m as he has got
around 2000 people suffering from RSI back to work after typical
diagnoses such as "You'll never work again" .
The TUC
has recently published a report that says employers are ignoring
the massive costs to their businesses of RSI and back strain at
work. With over a third of a million sufferers taking ten million
days off work a year Government statistics show that
musculo-skeletal disorders, viz RSI and back strain, are the
second most common work-related disease in Great Britain. The
cost is estimated as £2b per year. The TUC goes on to say that
employers are "not recording the number of sufferers or the
amount of days lost to these problems, nor are they providing
treatment for those suffering. One way forward, suggests the TUC,
is for the Insurance companies to "encourage" employers
to increase rehabilitation and treatment offered to back strain
and RSI sufferers.
Statistics
suggest that around 30% of the £2b per year is down to RSI but
there is no breakdown for keyboard-related cases. If this is as
low as 5%, getting somebody back to work with a Maltron ergonomically
designed keyboard must be worth some £30m per year and
consequently a staggering £600m over twenty years to the tax
payer! "
From:
RSI Recovery - The Way Forward
The Legal Point
The fact that the MALTRON
keyboard has been available for so long and is now proved to be so effective,
puts special responsibility and "duty of care" on employers and professional
advisers to become fully aware of it. They must then ensure that where there is
any intensive keyboard work, the assessment and advice given includes the
recommendation that, as a proactive measure to avoid the problem and costs of
keyboard related RSI:-
-
It should be experienced by
all operators by means of a hire trial so that they will be aware that there is
a likely answer to the problem should it arise
-
Where there is any report of
pain, it should be installed without delay and the operator given adequate time
to adjust to the new shape as stated above
Paper and screen based adaptation courses are available
While there is no certainty that a MALTRON keyboard will give recovery,
experience so far, as reported above, shows that RSI sufferers who do adapt to
it obtain a substantial reduction in pain with improved freedom of movement and
recovery of career prospects. From this it follows that failure to offer this
option could leave both Company and adviser open to a charge of failure to
exercise "Due Care" in the event of legal action.
LINKS
Check out Court Judgment Data re wrulds and get more
than a little worried!
Office
Rehabilitation
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