Bavelu for teams: back pain prevention at work

If you look after people who sit at screens all day, back pain prevention at work is less about one big fix than a few ordinary things done consistently. This page sets out what back and neck pain cost, which workplace programmes the research supports, and how a team could use Bavelu alongside them.

What back and neck pain cost at work

Low back pain is the single leading cause of disability worldwide. It affected 619 million people in 2020, and the World Health Organization expects that to reach 843 million by 2050 (WHO, 2023). Neck pain affected another 203 million people in 2020 (GBD 2021 Neck Pain Collaborators, 2024).

Work is part of that picture. The Global Burden of Disease study attributed 22% of the years lived with disability from low back pain to occupational ergonomic factors, a category that stands in for lifting, forceful movements, awkward postures and vibration (GBD 2021 Low Back Pain Collaborators, 2023).

In Great Britain, the Health and Safety Executive’s estimates for 2024/25, based on what workers report in the Labour Force Survey, are (HSE, 2025):

• 511,000 workers had a work-related musculoskeletal disorder, new or long-standing.
• 7.1 million working days were lost to these disorders, an average of 14 days per case.
• The back was mainly affected in 43% of cases, and the upper limbs or neck in 41%.
• Musculoskeletal disorders made up 27% of all work-related ill health and 20% of the working days lost to it.

When HSE last asked about causes, in surveys from 2009/10 to 2011/12, the work factors people named most were manual handling, working in awkward or tiring positions, and keyboard or repetitive work.

What works for back pain prevention at work?

No single measure solves it. Exercise has the strongest evidence. Workstation set-up and breaks are a legal duty for screen work in Great Britain, but their effect on pain is less clear.

Exercise

• A review of 21 prevention trials with 30,850 people found that exercise combined with education lowered the risk of an episode of low back pain by about 45% (moderate-quality evidence). Exercise alone may lower it by about a third. Education on its own, back belts and shoe insoles did not prevent back pain (Steffens et al., 2016).
• A review of workplace interventions for upper limb musculoskeletal disorders found strong evidence that a workplace resistance training programme can help prevent and manage them, and moderate evidence for stretching programmes (Van Eerd et al., 2016).
• Short sessions can count. In a trial of 198 working adults with frequent neck and shoulder pain, two minutes of strengthening a day, five days a week, lowered pain by 1.4 points on a 0 to 10 scale after ten weeks, compared with health information alone (Andersen et al., 2011). See is two minutes of exercise enough?

Ergonomics

For people who use screens daily for an hour or more at a time, employers in Great Britain must carry out a workstation assessment, reduce risks including by making sure people take breaks or change activity, provide an eye test on request, and give training and information (HSE). This applies to home workers and hot-deskers too; our home office guide and office chair setup cover the practical side.

What set-up does for pain is less certain. A Cochrane review of 15 trials with 2,165 office workers found inconsistent evidence for arm supports and alternative computer mice, and no effect on upper limb pain or discomfort from workstation adjustment or sit-stand desks, each tested in one study (Hoe et al., 2018). Sit-stand desks do reduce sitting, by about 100 minutes a workday in the first three months, although the evidence is of low quality (Shrestha et al., 2018). That may be worth having for sedentary behaviour in general, but less sitting is not the same thing as less pain.

Breaks

HSE says there is no legal rule on how long or how often breaks from screen work should be, and advises short breaks often rather than longer ones less often (HSE). The research on breaks is thin: the Cochrane review found very low-quality evidence that extra breaks reduced neck and arm discomfort in data entry workers (Hoe et al., 2018). Breaks are still the easiest place to fit movement into a day, which is where microbreaks come in.

Digital programmes

A 2025 review found five randomised trials of web or app programmes for low back pain in the workplace, combining exercise, ergonomics education and changes to work activities. There was moderate-quality evidence of improvements in pain, disability and physical performance, but effects on quality of life and work outcomes were inconsistent, and none of the programmes was linked to occupational health services (Chen et al., 2025). Our guide to back and neck pain apps sets out what to check before you choose one.

How a team could use Bavelu

Bavelu is an iPhone app with guided stretching and mobility sessions for the neck, shoulders, upper back and lower back. Its exercises are designed and filmed by physiotherapists, led by Mgr. Lukáš Kučera, who has 13 years of practice. Nothing is AI-generated. For a team, that means:

• A plan for each person. A short questionnaire about where it hurts, how much, for how long and how many hours they spend at the computer builds an individual plan from a library of 330 sessions.
• Something for each kind of day. The daily session comes in a short and a full version, for example 7 or 11 minutes. Desk routines of two to four minutes fit into the breaks HSE recommends.
• No equipment. Exercises are done at a desk, on a chair or on a mat.
• AirPods guidance. With AirPods that support head tracking, the desk routines follow the head and guide each move, and the app notices when the head leans forward and lets the person know. How AirPods can track your head posture explains how that works and its limits.
• Progress people can see. A weekly progress view, and finished sessions can sync to Apple Health as workouts.

Two practical limits: Bavelu is for iPhone only, and the AirPods features need compatible AirPods. It is not a medical device. It does not replace workstation assessments, occupational health or treatment, and anyone with severe, sudden or worsening pain, or pain with numbness or weakness in the legs, should see a doctor first (NHS).

Set against the evidence above, Bavelu is a way to make regular movement part of the working day, alongside your workstation assessments and break planning. Its sessions are stretching and mobility, so they are not the same as the strengthening programmes tested in several of the trials above. If you want a sense of how much sitting your team is doing, the sitting time calculator is a good conversation starter.

Get in touch

If you would like to offer Bavelu to your team, write to info@bavelu.com. Tell us a little about your team and how people work, and we will talk through what would suit you.