A large magazine publishing company with an increasingly strong dependence on display screen equipment discovered a number of incidences of Work Related Upper Limb Disorders (WRULDs) amongst their staff. Management decided that a major overhaul of their Health and Safety policy and procedures was required to combat their problems.

The client commissioned us to conduct an ergonomics audit of their main building. The audit covered all aspects of the working environment and their current workstation design configurations. The main purpose of this survey was to identify the main issues contributing to their incidences of WRULDs and then make recommendations to combat them. One of the main findings from the audit was that their all staff required better training in the use of their workstation and that managers needed to be made more aware of their responsibilities under the current Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipment) Regulations 1992.

With our help, the HR department re-wrote their health and safety policy to include more information on the main ergonomics features of a 'healthy' workstation set-up. These were re-issued with everyone's contract of employment. The revised H&S policy and procedures also highlighted what the employees could expect from the company in the way of management support, and also what the company expected from its staff!

We conducted a series of Assessing DSE courses to raise managers' awareness of the Health & Safety issues connected with display screen work. We then established our Using Display Screen Equipment training seminar to retrain all existing staff on the use of their workstation. At the same time as the initial courses were running, four members of staff were trained as workstation assessors and set about assessing all the problem workstations identified by the staff after they had completed their training.

The process has continued to evolve, with education being the key element. Staff have been encouraged to report any problems they may be experiencing however trivial. All new staff are trained within three months of their joining, and are provided from day one with the company health and safety pack outlining the policy and procedures. Their managers are also encouraged, through their training, to make minor adjustments to workstations and also to control workflow should this start to cause a problem.

The overall effect of this project was that no new incidences of WRULDs were reported in the following two year period.

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A Guide to Work-Related Upper Limb Disorders
We regularly receive e-mails from people asking about "RSI". This article has been compiled to help clarify the nature of Work Related Upper Limb Disorders (WRULD) and to identify the known contributory factors. The article also gives general advice regarding the appropriate treatment and management of this condition.

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