To mark National Stress Awareness Day, health and wellbeing company DocHQ highlights how living with chronic pain can result in your employees suffering from high stress levels at work.
Chronic pain can impact many parts of life, not least work. For those who are suffering from conditions, whether short-term or long-term, it can lead to distraction, low productivity and high levels of stress, which in turn can negatively affect an employee’s mental health.
The Canadian Journal of Pain revealed in a 2021 study that people living with chronic pain were 64% less likely to view their job as rewarding, and had increased feelings of being ostrasicised in the workplace. People with pain also missed on average nine days more than employees without pain.
This is why human resources should consider using DocHQ’s Physioservice for their employees’ benefit, to help reduce pain and the associated levels of stress that come with it.
What is DocHQ Physio?
DocHQ Physio is a cutting-edge physiotherapy service that uses AI technology to track users’ movements during rehab and strengthening exercises to ensure the participant is doing the moves correctly with the right form to produce the best outcome.
This means that you can offer the service to your staff to help them recover from injury from the comfort of their own home, or office, as they can undertake the exercises at their own leisure – whether it’s at lunch or as a way of moving between meetings.
It’s especially useful for manufacturing or delivery companies where the workforce is involved in a high level of manual labour, where the risk of musculoskeletal (MSK) injury is significantly higher.
According to the 2021/22 Labour Force Study, 565,000 people in the UK sustained an injury at work, with 477,000 suffering an MSK injury, with 42% of these injuries being back-related.
This is where DocHQ Physio can help – not just in aiding injured employees’ return to full health, but also by helping to prevent MSK injuries in the first place by strenghtening the key muscles your staff use in your company’s output, whether it’s the construction industry or purely office-based.
How does DocHQ Physio work?
By adding DocHQ Physio to your employee benefits package, staff can take part in the service by signing up and having an initial meeting with a chartered physiotherapist via a video call. The physio will assess the member of staff, find out what, if any, injuries they may be suffering from, and create an exercise programme that will rehab any exisiting injuries, and/or build strength to avoid future injury.
The programme is then available for the user to access whenever is convenient for them – all they require is a screen with a built-in camera that can see their movements. The user then does the exercises, which can last from 5 to 30 minutes, while DocHQ’s innovative body-tracking software assesses each movement, instantly suggesting improvements to the user on how to improve their form (eg by bending their arm more, or squatting deeper) so they benefit more from the exercise and boost their recovery.
It also provides motivation to complete the exercises, as there are tangible targets to hit that are monitored by the physio so that they can adjust the programme if necessary.
The result for your company is a fitter, happier and less stressed workforce and, in turn, reduced occurrence of injury, work-related stress and absenteeism.
To find out more about how DocHQ Physio can benefit your workforce and reduce stress, email Amit Arora at [email protected] to discuss bespoke corporate packages