Sedentary Habits and Sore Necks: Why Accessible Health Benefits Matter

When employees experience musculoskeletal pain, identifying the source can be difficult—whether it's work-related, due to poor sleep posture, or the result of everyday tasks at home or during recreation. Effectively leveraging the medical benefit strategy can optimize outcomes and lower the total cost of care, including workers’ compensation claims. Ensuring treatment for pain is available, accessible, and affordable through the health plan reduces the incentive to default to more complex and costly workers’ compensation. Employees tend to pursue the path of least resistance, making their own judgments about whether an issue is work-related. Offering them at least equal value and experience within both benefits supports better decision-making, improves overall care, and helps control costs. For example, a recent systematic review found that sedentary behavior—especially mobile phone and computer use—significantly increases the risk of neck pain, underscoring how everyday, non-work factors also contribute to ergonomic musculoskeletal issues (Meng et al., 2025).

Meng, Y., Xue, Y., Yang, S., et al. (2025). The associations between sedentary behavior and neck pain: a systematic review and meta-analysis. BMC Public Health, 25, 453. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-025-21685-9