Microsoft Study Says Repetitive Strain Injury Costs $600m

4roddas writes "Work-related RSI cases are at an all-time high and the cost to businesses is spiraling, new Microsoft research reveals. Repetitive strain injury cases have soared by over 30 percent in the last year, costing businesses over US$600 million in lost working hours — and causing pain and debilitating discomfort to over-worked staff. Microsoft claims the rapidly emerging trend of 'mobile working' — with office-based employees now working on the move for an average of an hour more per day than they did two years ago using laptops and mobile devices — is behind this alarming climb in work-related injury. The company arrived at its conclusions in a poll among over 1,000 office workers, HR managers and office managers. This showed that 68 percent of office workers suffered from aches and pains, with the most common symptoms including back ache, shoulder pain and wrist/hand pain."

Comments

Microsoft Surface to the rescue!

[mfearby]

Let me guess... Microsoft has the answer, and it's called Surface?

I wonder how much

[handmedowns]

Microsoft has caused business to lose in working hours from:

* Work / time lost directly due to viruses
* Work / time lost indirectly due to dealing with spam / botnets (due to insecure Windows Machines)
* Incompatibilities between MS Office versions
* Certifying what Hardware / Software Vista REALLY supports
etc etc.


I'd have to imagine that the bottleneck would be Microsoft before anything like carpal tunnel, RSI, MS, or blindness.

Re:I hate to sound cynical, but ...

[Brian Gordon]

Also, apparently this is the year of Linux on the ultra-mobile laptop. No wonder they're trying to diss mobile computing.

Re:I hate to sound cynical, but ...

[gstoddart]

I hate to be cynical, but why would Microsoft fund this study? They sell ergonomic keyboards.

To deflect people from looking at the fact that the RSIs are caused by their software which has too damned many button clicks and most stuff can ony be done with a mouse.

I mean, come on, the old skool vi guys don't have RSI. They were manly men who kept their hands on the how row and never needed to reach over to use the mouse scroll wheel.

It's a plot to sell keyboards which minimize the impacts of badly designed UIs on the human body. Oh, that, and to keep us from looking into the mind control devices they've been embedding in the keyboards. I recommend wrapping them in tinfoil. ;-)

Cheers