Investigating the impact of managerial, environmental and demographic factors on the prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders among office workers

Musculoskeletal disorders are one of the main problems of industries and administrative jobs, which are caused by various factors. The study aimed to determine the role of each individual, physical, psychosocial, and environmental factors in causing musculoskeletal disorders; Identifying and controlling risk factors, is an important step in reducing and preventing these disorders.

The present study is a cross-sectional study of 342 employees working in different government offices in Saveh city in 2021. In this study, the Nordic summary questionnaire and ROSA checklist were used to investigate the prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders. Also, to investigate individual and psychosocial factors of the work environment, a personal information questionnaire and a general Nordic questionnaire were used. In addition, the evaluation of conditions of work environment was done by Hagner model E1 lux meter devices, TIS10 model thermal stress measuring device, and TES1358 sound meter. Finally, all the resulting data were entered into SPSS software and tested after coding.

The results showed that body mass index and gender have a significant effect on suffering from musculoskeletal disorders (p-value<0.05). The results of the Pearson correlation test indicated that there is a significant relationship between the report of pain or discomfort in the neck area with the screen-phone risk score, wrist/hand with the keyboard-mouse risk score, as well as shoulder, upper back, elbow and lower back with the chair risk score. p-value <0.05). In addition, there is a significant relationship between the report of pain or discomfort in the neck, shoulder, and wrist/hand areas with the overall ROSA score. Also, there is a significant difference between the prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders and levels of job demands, levels of job control, levels of social interactions, levels of leadership, levels of the organizational atmosphere, levels of job satisfaction, and levels of stress (p-value<0.05).

The results of this study showed that several factors play a role in musculoskeletal disorders, such as job requirements, social interactions, and stress in the group of psychosocial factors that had considerable importance in causing musculoskeletal disorders. Among the individual factors, gender and body mass index (BMI) is important, and among the workstation factors, the chair has played a significant role in causing musculoskeletal disorders.