● Ålesund · Møre og Romsdal
Find out what is wearing your people out.And what to fix first.
A load analysis is one day at your workplace. I look at how the work is actually done, everyone answers four minutes of anonymous questions, and you get a written report that ranks the causes — what to fix first, roughly what each fix costs, and what is not worth doing. I cannot promise your sick leave falls. I can tell you where the load is.
- 1 A day on your site
- 2 Four minutes of questions, anonymous
- 3 A report that ranks what to fix
Wöhler (S-N) curve — steel. Every steel has a load it carries forever without failing: the flat part of the curve, its endurance limit. Above that line, damage is cumulative and the only variable is how many cycles it takes.
The same axes, for people — an analogy, not data. A body under repeated load with nothing done about recovery does not flatten out. Tolerance keeps falling, so the load that was survivable last year is the load that signs someone off this year. There is no endurance limit on this curve.
The same body, with the load managed. A human endurance limit is not a material property you are issued — it is a level you maintain, or fail to. That is the whole job: find where the line sits, keep the load under it, and measure whether it moved. This is the claim, not a proven result — see the evidence section for exactly how far the research goes.
01 The case is arithmetic
Absence is not a soft cost. It's a line item with a known price.
Four numbers from NAV and NHO decide whether this conversation is worth having. They are public, current, and they point at exactly the two diagnosis groups this programme addresses.
Total sick leave in Norway, Q1 2026, seasonally adjusted
NAV · Q1 2026
Share caused by mental-health (28.5%) and musculoskeletal (27.6%) diagnoses — together, over half
NAV · Q1 2026
Of all sick-pay days are musculoskeletal — the single largest group
NAV · Q1 2026
Cost to the employer per absence day (NHO). NAV's own calculator uses 4 700
NHO · NAV fraværskalkulator
The employer pays the first 16 days in full. That makes one prevented long-term case worth NOK 48 000–75 000 before anything else is counted.
02 Your numbers
What absence costs you this year
Three inputs. No email required, nothing stored — the arithmetic runs in your browser.
Inputs
Estimated annual absence cost
NOK 0
Programme, one groupYour absence cost
—
—
Indicative only. Assumes 230 working days per employee per year. Absence is multi-causal and no programme addresses all of it — this estimates the size of the problem, not the size of a saving.
03 Method
Everyone measures or delivers. Nobody closes the loop.
Your occupational health service measures and reports. Ergonomics software scores workstations. A gym card delivers nothing you can audit. Four steps, one supplier, one invoice — and the fourth step is the one that makes the other three worth paying for.
01
Assess
Half a day on site. I walk the floor, screen workstations, interview six to eight people, and review your absence data broken down by diagnosis group. You get a written report naming the three interventions with the best return — and the ones not worth doing.
02
Train
Thirty minutes a week on site, in work clothes, standing, no mats. Specific progressive resistance work for the tissue that actually carries the load — controlled to Borg RPE 5–7, not a stretch class.
03
Re-measure
Work ability, musculoskeletal discomfort across nine body regions, wellbeing, attendance and adherence — at week 0, week 6 and week 12, using published instruments used unmodified.
04
Document
A report with your logo on it, aggregate numbers, honest uncertainty, and a recommendation — including a recommendation to stop, if that's what the numbers say. Something you can put in front of your AMU without translating it first.
Then it repeats — quarterly, against your own baseline
WAS · WAI
The Work Ability Score — one question, 0–10, from the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health's Work Ability Index.
NMQ
The Standardised Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire, nine body regions, developed under the Nordic Council of Ministers.
WHO-5
The WHO Well-Being Index. Five items, scored 0–100. Aggregate only, never individual, never a diagnosis.
REBA · RULA
The standard ergonomic scoring methods, computed from video on-device. A screening tool that flags stations for human review — not a validated measurement, and stated as such.
04 Evidence
What the research supports — and what it doesn't
The programme's format is taken from published trials rather than from what feels good in a session. Here is the evidence, with the citations, including where it stops.
HR 9.84
Employees with a poor Work Ability Score had a 9.84× hazard of disability pension (95% CI 6.68–14.49) and 3.08× the accumulated long-term absence days, versus those scoring good or excellent. Register-linked, 11 131 employees, three-year follow-up. This is why WAS is the headline metric.
Work ability score as predictor of disability pension and long-term sickness absence
n = 351
A 20-week cluster randomised trial: specific neck and shoulder strength training at the workplace reduced neck pain intensity and headache (P < 0.001 for headache) versus a reference group — and it worked largely independently of how much supervision was provided.
Effect of training supervision on strength training for neck/shoulder pain, cluster RCT
9 × 7 min
A companion trial of 447 office workers tested how to distribute one weekly training hour — as 1×60, 3×20 or 9×7 minutes. Distributed micro-doses are a studied format, not a marketing idea. It's why the weekly visit is paired with short work on the days between.
Influence of frequency and duration of strength training for neck and shoulder pain, RCT
Where the evidence stopsThose trials measured pain. The cohort research measures work ability predicting absence. Those are two separate evidence bases and I will not chain them together to promise you a reduction in sick leave — the bridge between them is not proven. What I will do is measure honestly, report the uncertainty, tell you the sample is too small for statistical significance when it is, and recommend stopping if the numbers say stop.
05 What it costs
One thing, priced by how big you are.
I sell one thing: the load analysis. What it costs depends on how many people you have and how many different kinds of work they do, because that is what decides how long it takes. Prices are below in full — you should not have to book a call to find out whether you can afford this.
What is included, every time
- A day at your workplace, watching how the work is actually done
- Every worker answers four minutes of questions — anonymous, on their phone
- Scoring of the workstations that carry the most load, using the standard ergonomic methods
- A check of the legal duties you may be missing, starting with screen-worker eye tests
- A written report: the causes ranked, what each fix costs, and what is not worth doing
- A number you can measure against next year
| Employees | Time on site | Kinds of work | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1–25 | Half a day | up to 2 | NOK 14 000 |
| 26–75 | One day | up to 3 | NOK 24 000 |
| 76–200 | One and a half days | up to 4 | NOK 38 000 |
| 201–500 | Two and a half days | up to 6 | NOK 58 000 |
| 500+ | Quoted | — | from NOK 78 000 |
All prices exclude MVA. “Kinds of work” means genuinely different physical demands — an office, a warehouse and a welding bay are three. At 200 employees this works out under NOK 200 per person, once.
If you want more
- The same analysis again after twelve months, so you can see what moved 60%
- An extra kind of work beyond your tier NOK 6 000
- I present the findings to your AMU or leadership team NOK 8 000
That is everything I sell right now. If the report says training would help, we can talk about that afterwards — but I would rather measure your workplace than sell you a programme before either of us knows what it needs.
06 Data & personvern
Health data, handled so your union rep can read the design and approve it
These are special-category data under GDPR Article 9. The architecture is built so that the sensitive part never reaches the employer at all.
No individual data, ever
Employers receive group aggregates only, and only when a group has at least five responses. There is no filterable dashboard, because filtering is how people get re-identified.
No names held at all
Participants generate their own code, so responses can be linked across time without anyone — including me — knowing who answered. No names, no emails, no employee numbers.
EU-hosted, 36 months
Stored in the EU, deleted or irreversibly anonymised after 36 months. Workstation video is processed on the device and never uploaded.
Voluntary, and privately so
Participation is voluntary, withdrawal is unconditional, and the employer is never told who declined or who withdrew. I brief your tillitsvalgt and verneombud before anything goes out.
07 About
Arjun Ajith
I trained as a mechanical engineer, then took a master's in innovation and technology management, specialising in systems engineering. Before that — and ever since — I trained in yoga, in a Kerala lineage where it has been practised and taught across generations.
Those things are usually kept apart. I don't think they should be. Mechanical engineering taught me to think in load paths and fatigue. Systems engineering taught me to think in loops — that an intervention you cannot measure is not an intervention, it's a hope. Twenty years of practice taught me what both feel like from the inside, and how a body actually learns a new pattern.
I've taught in India, Qatar, Sweden and Norway. I moved to Ålesund in 2020 and I'm still a student of the practice. I always will be.
When I design a session for a company, I think like an engineer: what's the load, where does the wear happen, and what's the smallest intervention that creates the greatest effect?
What I offer isn't an escape from your working day. It's a set of tools you use in the middle of it — and a measurement discipline honest enough that you'll know if they aren't working.
08 Three places · autumn 2026
Reference client programme
I'm new to this market in Ålesund and I would rather say so than pretend otherwise. Three organisations get a full 12-week pilot at half price this autumn. In return I need something specific from each.
Three places open
Measurement
Your team takes part in the before-and-after measurement, and I may publish the anonymised numbers.
A named quote
An honest testimonial from your HMS or HR lead — including if it's qualified.
Your logo
Permission to say publicly that we worked together.
Two introductions
To two comparable organisations in the region, if the programme was worth it.
09 Questions people actually ask
The four objections, answered straight
Q1We already have an occupational health service. Why would we add this?
Your bedriftshelsetjeneste measures, advises and reports — that's what the regulation asks of them, and they do it. What almost none of them do is come back every week and deliver a physical intervention, then re-measure the same people against their own baseline. I'm not a replacement for your BHT. I'm the delivery step they don't do, and I'll hand you numbers in the same format they use.
Q2Is this yoga? It won't land with our people.
Nobody sits on a mat. Sessions run thirty minutes, on site, standing, in work clothes, with no music and no Sanskrit. What it actually is: specific progressive resistance work for the neck, shoulders and back, controlled to Borg RPE 5–7 — the format used in the workplace trials cited above. My training is in a Kerala yoga lineage and I won't hide that, but what arrives on your floor is strength work for the tissue carrying the load.
Q3Nobody will turn up after week three.
Sometimes that's true, and it's the honest risk. Three things are built to counter it: the session is inside paid working hours, it's in the same slot every week so it becomes routine rather than a decision, and attendance is measured and reported to you as a number. There's also a written stop-rule — if attendance is below 40% at week six, we stop and I tell you why. I would rather end a pilot than invoice you for an empty room.
Q4Can you deliver this in Norwegian?
Not yet — sessions and reports are in English, and my Norwegian is in progress. In the Ålesund engineering cluster that's usually a non-issue, and on mixed-language floors it's often an advantage: English reaches the Polish, Filipino and Baltic colleagues that Norwegian-language programmes quietly leave out. If your floor genuinely runs in Norwegian only, say so early and I'll tell you straight that I'm the wrong supplier this year.
10 Get in touch
Start with fifteen minutes and one question
Do you know how much of your sick leave is musculoskeletal? Most HMS leads know it to one decimal. If you do, we can have a useful conversation in a quarter of an hour — and if this isn't relevant, I'd rather you tell me that quickly.