Your Job Shouldn’t Wreck Your Body: A Note for WorkSpace Week
This week is WorkSpace Week, 19 to 25 October, an annual campaign run by the Australian Chiropractors Association dedicated to reducing work-related musculoskeletal disorders. This year’s theme is Work Well From Head to Toe, and it landed at a good time for me to say something I’ve been meaning to write for a while.
The injuries I see most often in clinic are not dramatic. Nobody fell off a ladder or got hit by something. They’re the quiet injuries. The ones that crept in over months and years of doing the same thing, the same way, in the same position, day after day.
Sitting at a desk. Lifting the same way every shift. Looking down at a screen all day. Bending over patients, in my case.
Repetition is sneaky. It feels like nothing until it feels like everything.
What the Numbers Actually Say
Work-related musculoskeletal disorders are the leading work health and safety issue in Australia, accounting for the majority of workers’ compensation claims at 57%. According to a Deloitte Access Economics report, they cost the economy over $55 billion annually in direct health costs, lost productivity, and reduced quality of life.
That’s not a niche problem. That’s most of us, in most industries, doing damage we don’t always notice until it’s well underway.
The at-risk groups are broad: desk workers, tradies, drivers, healthcare workers, aged care and childcare workers, NDIS support workers, labourers, and machinery operators. If you use your body at work, this is relevant to you. And if you sit at a computer all day, it’s just as relevant, even if it doesn’t feel that way.
What I Do About It Myself
I’ll be honest with you, because I think it matters. I’m a chiropractor who spends her day bending over patients, using her hands and wrists repeatedly, and adjusting her body into positions that are, frankly, not ideal for long-term joint health.
I know exactly what’s coming for me if I don’t manage it.
So here’s what I actually do, not as a list of things you should do, just as an honest account of how a clinician tries to practise what she preaches.
My hands and wrists are the thing I think about most. The nature of adjusting puts repetitive load through my finger joints, and hand arthritis is genuinely common in this profession by the end of a career. To get ahead of it, I do a significant amount of grip strength training at the gym. Strengthening the muscles around a joint reduces the load on the joint itself. I also use MLS laser therapy periodically on my hands to reduce the inflammatory load that accumulates over time. It’s not glamorous, but it’s working.
Then there’s my thoracic spine. Spending the day bent over a table means my mid-back is constantly in flexion. Left unchecked, that creates a postural pattern that compounds over years. My countermeasure is thoracic extension: lying over a foam roller or a rolled-up towel to open the chest and reverse that rounding. I also do neck stretches at the end of the day and I’m very deliberate about adjusting the height of my treatment table so I’m not compromising my own posture to accommodate the patient.
Do I do all of this every day? No. But doing it some of the time is vastly better than never doing it, and being aware of the risk changes the way I move even when I’m not actively stretching.
That’s the point, really. Awareness is the first intervention.
What This Looks Like for You
The specifics will depend on what you do all day, but the principle holds across every job: whatever your body does repetitively, the antidote is the opposite movement, done consistently.
Desk workers: your chest tightens, your head drifts forward, your lower back rounds. The fix is extension, opening, moving. A break every 30 minutes is not a productivity killer, it’s an injury preventer. Your monitor should be at eye level. Your chair should support your lumbar curve. Your knees should sit slightly lower than your hips.
Physical workers: your risk is in the loading patterns, the lifting mechanics, the hours of standing or repetitive reaching. Small technique adjustments compounded over thousands of repetitions make an enormous difference to where you end up in ten years.
Everyone: look at your phone less. Or at least hold it higher. With 95% of Australians accessing the internet via smartphone, the amount of time spent with the head bent forward is quietly driving a significant portion of neck and upper back complaints. Tech neck is not a made-up condition.
Where We Come In
WorkSpace Week is a prompt, but the conversation doesn’t have to end with it.
If you’ve been carrying something, a stiff neck that won’t resolve, a lower back that grumbles by Thursday, a shoulder that’s been “a bit off” for longer than you’d care to admit, this is a reasonable moment to do something about it. Early intervention consistently produces better outcomes than waiting until something becomes a real problem.
At Balanced for Life, we’re happy to assess what’s happening, give you an honest picture of what’s contributing, and work with you on both the treatment and the practical habits that will help it hold.
The ACA has also made a range of free resources available for WorkSpace Week, including ergonomic checklists, tech neck guides, and factsheets for sitting, standing, and lifting well. Worth downloading if any of that is relevant to your workplace.
WorkSpace Week runs 19 to 25 October. But your spine is relevant all year.
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