These days everyone seems to know somebody who's been affected by RSI so prevention is high on the agenda for both employers and employees. There are various approaches to reducing the risk of RSI caused by work-related factors. It basically boils down to gaining an insight into safe working methods. After all, health and safety at work is the responsibility of both employers and employees. This page contains a number of useful tips all of which aim to reduce the number of repetitive movements, introducing both micro breaks and longer breaks, and ensuring you move more by having more varied tasks. Although some preventive measures will vary from sector to sector, many are applicable to most occupations. If you want to know more about RSI prevention in your particular sector you should ask your employer for information. You can also request that an RSI prevention policy be set up within your company. Take a look at the five Ws:

Work tasks: ensure variation
Working time: long, short and micro breaks
Work pressure: setting priorities
Workstation: an ergonomic work environment
Working well: conditions for healthy work

Work tasks: ensure variation
Varying your work tasks more will make your work more pleasant as well as reducing the risk of RSI. Ideally, this variation should include a mixture of substantive, organisational and supporting activities. The difficulty of the task also plays the role; "difficult" tasks are challenging, ensure you develop in your role and require you to be creative. However, too many tasks like this create too much pressure. Alternating them with routine tasks and ones which you are experienced in contributes to a good and relaxed way of working. Relaxation means less stress, less tensing of the muscles and therefore less risk of RSI. Moreover, more variety probably means more movement too. Whether an employee can make the above changes does of course depend on him or her having sufficient control over his/her own tasks, work pace, working methods and order in which things are done.

Working time: long, short and micro breaks
Working for a long time in the same position with tense muscles is one of the risk factors for RSI. Jobs involving a lot of display screen equipment work are particularly at risk. Almost 45 percent of the working population spend the vast majority of their time at the computer. The more hours per day you work at the computer to greater your risk of developing RSI. That's why there are legal regulations about taking breaks during computer work:

• You should have a break of at least ten minutes after every two hours computer work. Or alternatively a break of five minutes after every hour of computer work. This break may consist of other types of work. For example, a secretary may do some filing or make phone calls, thus effectively using her breaks to complete other, non repetitive tasks.
• You should not spend more than six hours a day at the computer. This includes using the computer at home.
• For laptops and notebooks the limit is two hours a day.

There is evidence that taking regular breaks increases both productivity and the quality of work! If you do a lot of computer work it is advisable to take frequent short breaks and regular longer breaks. Pausing occasionally for a few minutes to do an exercise, even whilst still at your desk, reduces the muscle tension in arms, neck and shoulders. Longer breaks are more effective if you get up and move around. A meeting may serve as a longer break because it provides a change in physical activity.

If you type or use the mouse a lot then taking micro breaks can also help. A micro break of about 20 seconds every ten minutes interrupts the long term static loading. However, if you already have symptoms then more micro breaks are recommended, such as every five minutes or as often as necessary. If you are really enthusiastic about a particular project you tend to carry on longer than you realise. You also risk this if you have flexible working hours or you can organise your work yourself. Even more so if you are enthusiastic and highly motivated. In order to prevent yourself skipping breaks you could use an ergonomic computer software program. Most of these programs illustrate exercises for you to do in the short breaks and it is also possible to actually lock the computer for five minutes an hour. If you always take a break on time anyway you will hardly noticed that the software program can force you to do so.

Below are a few more suggestions for simple ways of breaking up continuous computer work. After all, every little helps.

• Fetch your own coffee instead of having it brought to you
• do your own photocopying
• actually go and see colleagues if you have a query instead of using the telephone or sending e-mail
• rearrange your office so that you have to stand up more often. For example, move the cupboard, printer, fax and dustbin further away from your desk.
• Put the telephone out of reach and get into the habit of standing up to make phone calls.

Work pressure: setting priorities
Working continuously at high-speed makes your muscles tense and vulnerable. Many RSI sufferers recall having deadlines to meet during the time they developed RSI. Many of them experienced severe symptoms after a relatively short time of striving to meet a deadline. Enthusiastic and loyal employees are particularly at risk as the work pressure mounts. They tend to give their work priority and are often less aware of the first signs of overuse injury. The pressure of deadlines can be relieved if responsibility is shared. And of course good planning can help make them easier to meet. Some people tend to work on for longer than is good for them and sometimes personal factors such as insecurity or being highly driven can play a role in the perceived high pressure. Having too much work to do can also lead to the employee trying to do two different tasks at the same time. Overload can be avoided by organising and structuring the activities more efficiently. The way in which you organise your own work can make a huge difference to the pressure you experience. Healthy working has a lot to do with setting priorities. Time management training can help.

Workstation: an ergonomic work environment
An ergonomically sound workplace or workstation is important for a good working posture. Furniture and gadgets alone cannot prevent RSI. You need to know how to use them correctly and you also need to take other factors into account the can play a part in healthy working. Many people still work with outdated software, which can make things more complicated than they need to be, particularly if the programs don't combine well with those from other computers. This can lead to considerable unnecessary, irritating and time-consuming activity. It is important to get to grips properly with new software and to avoid software that is not sufficiently user-friendly. In other words, make sure your computer does its job properly.

Particular care should be taken with laptops and notebooks. They may be a space saving and trendy but without extra accessories they are definitely not suitable for everyday use. Portable computer screens are so low that they force the user to adopt a bad posture. You should only use them for any length of time if you can attach an extra, normal keyboard, a normal mouse and a special support that brings the screen up to eye level. Research has shown that for moving the cursor a mouse is still preferable to a trackball, touchpad or foot mouse. The more expensive mice have the advantage that they get dirty less quickly; and dirty mice are less accurate and require more effort. Cordless mice can be moved around more freely and often have a third button which replaces the double-click and a scrolling wheel which makes leafing through pages on the Web easier. Software is also available to get round the problem of double-clicking. Finally, you can more or less eradicate the need to use the mouse by learning keyboard shortcuts.

Working well: conditions for healthy work
Working well involves so much more than operating at an ergonomically sound workstation. It's about dealing with pressure, knowing when to stop and being able to do so, being able to delegate and collaborating well with colleagues. To work well you also need adequate reward, security, fulfilment and status.

If difficulties occur in your working environment that are bound to cause problems if allowed to continue you need to solve them. For example, if you feel that you are constantly under too much pressure or are constantly having to work overtime you should say something about it. Try to make sure you are not constantly preoccupied with work. Don't wait until the tension is really high. Discussing problems on time should ensure that arrangements can be made for possible solutions. A healthy working environment is a matter for both employers and employees. As an employee you have a say in what constitutes good working conditions for you.