In the last week, this report has been published by Bupa in conjunction with The Work Foundation, Rand Europe and C3 Collaborating for Health. Its purpose is to identify how employers, government and providers of workplace health interventions can respond to the challenge working age ill health poses to UK productivity and public health. It’s a straight forward summary of many of the current issues and makes some recommendations that resonate with me and what I’ve been saying for a while now.
Here are the recommendations made for employers (in italics), with my comments on each:
- Invest where it makes sense – in health interventions that are known to be effective. This might seem common sense but UK employers are still committing a big chunk of their healthcare spend on ineffective interventions and initiatives that are not evidence based.
- Understand the health profile of your workforce and involve employees in decisions about investment in workplace health. This should actually be the number one recommendation. So many employers buy products and services because they seem like a good idea without proper analysis of their application to a specific workforce or indeed the appetite of that workforce to engage with what has been forced upon them.
- Ensure that workplace health interventions have clear objectives and are supported by senior management. See my definition of a health and wellbeing strategy on the Shandwell home page.
- Track key metrics about the health of the workforce, such as levels of sickness absence, health and general wellbeing. It is important to measure and quantify the impact of what you are doing. In my experience, this is an area that has seen some real improvement over the last few years.
- Consider improving the quality of work as well as more traditional workplace health interventions. I can’t put a timescale on this but I believe that at some stage, all physical workplace interventions will be common place and standardised across all employers. What will make the difference in the future is how employers move from the questionable ‘work is good for you’ theory to the unquestionable ’ good work is good for you’. This will be the real preventative prize.
- Find innovative ways to involve as many employees as possible in workplace health interventions. I can’t argue with this but not the strongest one to finish on.
The report contains recommendations for government, the top one for me is improving the co-ordination of government policy on workplace health.
It also has recommendations for providers of workplace health interventions. Bupa is obviously a major player in this area and some might say that the report is a bit self serving in this respect which I think is a little unfair. They have spent time and money on the research and deserve credit for doing so.