More and more employees in Belgium are suffering from physical or psychological symptoms, a trend which is not only affecting people in manual labour professions – but across other sectors too.
Despite the increasing attention paid to employee's health and well-being in the workplace, and initiatives being taken to keep employees healthier, the number of workers in Belgium with physical or psychological complaints has risen sharply over the past five years, prevention service Mensura said based on an analysis of data from more than 320,000 people.
Around a quarter of workers have motor symptoms, including pain in the neck, shoulders or (lower) back, which marks a 22% increase over the past five years. "Low back pain, osteoarthritis of the spine and shoulder pain are the most common physical problems," the report read. Experts stressed that there has been a marked shift in the sectors where employees are most affected.
"For a long time, we associated physical complaints only with occupations involving heavy labour," experts noted. This is still the case: one in three workers in construction suffer from physical complaints, followed by 29% in the food sector and 27% in the chemistry sector. The largest increase was recorded among employees in the healthcare sector.
"But in the last two years, we also note a strong increase in the labour force that spends hours a day behind a screen, most of whom operate in the service sector," experts stressed. Within the service sector, which ranges from hairdressers and accountants to IT workers, the number of workers with physical complaints increased by 40% over the past five years. In the education sector, motor disorders rose by 64% in the same period.
While part of the increase in physical complaints is directly due to the work itself, it is also the result of people working into an older age, and the workload is higher, so they are more likely to develop motor disorders. This is especially true for people in the construction industry.
Mental health problems
When it comes to mental health, Mensura experts stressed that the situation is even more worrisome. Five years ago, 4.2% of workers reported having mental health problems, while in 2023, this figure was 7.5%, an increase of 80%.
The share of employees suffering from psychological symptoms is highest in the public sector (9.7%) and the health care and services sectors (both 8.9%). However, the most significant rise over the past five years was recorded among employees working in the education sector. Here, 7.3% report mental health complaints, a rise of 153%. In logistics (7.4%) and the service sector (8.9%), the figure has almost doubled too.
"The increase in the number of employees with psychological complaints is a direct consequence of the fact that the workload is increasing, in part because everyone is accessible everywhere, but also because life as a whole is becoming more complex and hectic," said Julie Daenen, another well-being expert at Mensura. "The fact that we are working more and more online causes extra strain on the brain, making it harder to break down stress hormones."
Both figures highlight that the efforts taken by companies to improve health are a good first step, but have not yet translated into concrete figures.
The experts advised that employers should for both health problems develop a preventive well-being policy to identify risks and use this information to take targeted actions. More generally, providing ergonomic equipment and teaching encouraging healthy behaviour, such as alternating between sitting and standing and postural variation can help with physical complaints.
