Supporting your workers with neck pain
Read evidence on what has worked, and some examples of promising workplace interventions.
Advice on treating acute neck pain
Neck pain usually improves on its own within a few days or weeks. Current recommendations for the treatment of acute neck pain include physical activity (for example, gently moving the neck).
While there are suggestions of using hot or cold compresses, hot showers, or massages, the effectiveness of these treatments has not been proven.
When you should see a health care professional
You should consult a doctor or physiotherapist if the pain persists for several days without improvement.
If the pain spreads from the neck to the arms or fingers and you also feel weakness, numbness or tingling in the hands please seek medical advice.
You should see a doctor immediately if you have difficulty bending your head forward, a stiff and painful neck, and flu-like symptoms.
Interventions to help manage neck pain in the office
Workstation ergonomics can help individuals
Workstation ergonomics means:
- setting up and using of the workstation according to ergonomic guidelines and principles
- ensuring that you are able to sit at your computer with neutral postures
- ensuring that you are able to view the computer screen at a good height without having to tilt your chin up the way.
It is important that any individual completing a workstation assessment for ergonomics has been trained to do this assessment.
While researchers are still building evidence on the impact of ergonomics at the workstation, simple changes such as changing the screen viewing height can help with an individual’s neck pain.
Exercise interventions can reduce pain
Exercise intervention such as physical training aims to maintain or improve your health.
At the moment, there is limited evidence that exercise reduces the risk of getting neck pain. However, there is stronger evidence that exercise can reduce existing pain.
The types of exercise include strengthening exercises, especially neck-specific strength training. What has also been found to help is general fitness training—endurance training, and flexibility and stretching exercises.
Health-promotion information has no impact
Health-promoting information aims to target physical, psychological, social, and work-related risk factors and improve health and wellbeing.
Where these have been examined by research—for example, stress management in the workplace—the rate of neck pain was not impacted.
For other interventions, including educational approaches and behaviour change approaches, there is no evidence at this time that they reduce the rate of neck pain.
Regular breaks have been shown to benefit workers
What has been seen to have an effect is taking regular work breaks. While it is recommended in the UK that you take a “screen break” before the onset of fatigue or discomfort. This means getting up and moving around every 50 to 60 minutes.
This also reduces some of the risks from sedentary work.