Work-related health problems which are prone to affect IT support individuals are becoming more visible to employers, it has been claimed.

Karl Monahan, business development manager at the On Site Massage Company, said that injuries such as back pain and repetitive strain injury are some of the ailments that office workers are suffering from in increasingly greater numbers.

He stated that the problem was due to people spending more time at their desks, as well as the technology becoming more compact.

Mr Monahan said of the evolving manner of the workplace environment: "You have now even got conditions like 'Blackberry thumb' and 'mouse elbow' developing."

According to Mercer's Pan-European health benefits report, the cost of employee healthcare benefits rose by an average of five per cent per employee across the continent during 2007, suggesting that employers are becoming more aware of the problems,

Furthermore, an average of 5.3 per cent of a company's payroll is spent on staff's health benefits.

In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were guaranteed response times and allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues.