5 numbers that show whether MSK prevention is working

Employee absence data is widely available to HR teams but usually never a reliable predictor of who’s next.

Most prevention strategies are measured with absence days and claims volumes, the numbers a benefits team already holds. Both describe what has already happened. Neither identifies who is heading the same way, so neither can trigger prevention.

That is why prediction and prevention cannot be run separately. A prevention budget without a leading measure is a set of services waiting to be asked for.

Absence moves last, and we now know how late

Vitality's Britain's Healthiest Workplace study puts average lost productivity at around 49.7 days per employee each year, roughly 90% of it presenteeism rather than absence.

Vitrue’s research this year in Frontiers in Digital Health puts a finer point on it. Across 10,453 desk-based workers in 116 organisations assessed between January and November 2025, at a pain score of four out of 10 the adjusted odds of productivity impairment, healthcare-seeking, mental health impact and reduced social participation all sat between roughly three and five times those at a score of one.

Absence was the exception and not statistically significant once organisational clustering was accounted for.

The number that can replace it

A pain score can be collected from everyone, not only those who come forward. A pain score of four is where it starts to mean something.

On that scale, four reads as being constantly aware of pain but able to carry on with most activities. Roughly four in 10 at that level have already sought professional help privately, none of it reaching their employer.

That makes it a leading measure a reward and benefits team would recognise.

5 questions a prevention dashboard should answer

Coverage. What share of the workforce has been assessed in the past 12 months?
At the line. What share of those assessed scored four or above? These are the people to protect and build a pathway for, while they are still coping and the support needed is small.
Silence. What share of that group has sought no help? These are the people with no other support.
Impact. What has the effect been on work, sleep or mood? This is the cost being paid now on productivity and performance, before it becomes a claim.
Movement. What share of last quarter's group now scores below four? This will tell you whether interventions have worked.

The patterns underneath these numbers should shape what you build. Pain concentrated in under-30s who are not seeking help is a reach problem, not a capacity one. Poorer sleep and higher stress tracking with more pain means an MSK pathway ignoring both will underperform. Women reporting more pain but no more absence means an absence-triggered pathway reaches them last.

Movement is the number to be judged on

Most wellbeing spend is defended with engagement figures. Sign-ups, logins, session counts. They describe uptake, not outcome, and cannot tell a finance director whether anybody improved.

Movement is different. It is a before and after on the same population using the same question, and the number to put in front of a Board.

Absence and claims should stay on the page as the lagging check, and in a medical inflation environment they matter. They are the wrong measure to judge the programme by first, because by then the cost is committed.

None of this needs new infrastructure. The pain question fits inside a wellbeing survey or display screen equipment cycle you already run. What changes is not how much you collect, but which number you treat as the trigger.

For more insights, watch the webinar The Silent Sick: Find MSK Risk Before It Becomes Absence Or A Claim.