Posted By Robert. A member of staff has, "all of a sudden", formally complained to me of experiencing "painfull backache" and is citing the seat as the problem, after two years! The problem disappears at the weekend! The individual has admitted to altering the height etc to no avail. The general office seating is good quality and was chosen because of the various positions of adjustment available to suit the comfort of the individual. No problems with other staff (over 100), I do regular checks and ask individuals if they have seating or workstation comfort problems, none to date. Full workstation assessments are recorded. I am no ergonometrist and I'm not sure what to do next. The individual is the type of person that would make a claim for injury. The one thing I cannot control is some "hot-desk" seating which gets moved around, and I suspect that this has been the sudden cause, ie the chair has been adjusted to suit another individual. The individul has a permanent workstation. Any information or guidance would really be appreciated. thanks Robert.

Posted By Jerry Lucey I would start with the pre-employment medical questionnaire if you have one on file. These usually ask if the person has a history of back problems. You mention that you have DSE assessments on file, which is useful but it would also be worth looking at what guidance/ training the individual has had on workstation set-up. It is common practice for personnel to be briefed/ trained on workstation set-up which is followed with a User Self Assessment Questionnaire which is followed with the actual assessment. The training and the Self Assessment may be of help here in that you start to build up a picture of the origins of the issue. I agree with Kieran that it may be prudent to refer this individual to your Occupational Physician. I have found it very useful for the company occupational physician to endeavour to obtain written consent from the individual to approach their GP. It has been my experience that the individual will in most cases give such consent and if not it may prompt you to examine whether the issue stretches back to before his/her current employment. To the best of my knowlege Iso Kinetic testing is not admissible in court but I have found it useful in determining how genuine injuries/ musculo skeletal issues are in that it indicates how much effort the individual is putting in during the various exercises.

Posted By Kieran J Duignan In response to the proposal 'Kieran could you not just look up the interpretaion for backache and experiencing, I have done so in the title on occupational back injury the leading world authorities on subject, Chaffrin et al., as well as HSE reports on court interpretations of back infjuries. I respectfuilly recommend that you do likewise if you are willing to learn just how varied back injury can be, how difficulty the symptoms are to diagnose and how extremely serious misunderstanding or neglect can be. I recognise you may simply prefer the level of snide comments and accept your freedome to indulge in them. An appropriate medical assessment can be conducted by an osteopath or physiotherapist. If the matter came to a hearing, the opinion of few g.p's is likely to stand up to that of a physio or osteopth.