Creating a Healthy Work Place

An estimated 2.2 million people in Great Britain suffer from health problems which they believe are work-related.1 Three-quarters of these self-reported work-related illnesses are musculoskeletal disorders (in particular those affecting the back and upper limbs), or stress, depression and anxiety.1 Alcohol misuse alone among employees costs up to £6.4 billion a year in lost productivity in England, through increased absenteeism, unemployment and premature death.2 The costs to employers, individuals and society as a whole of work-related ill health are substantial, negative and widespread. For a workplace, the full costs of ill health include production losses, costs of rehabilitation and recruitment, legal sanctions, reduced
competitiveness and flexibility, loss of quality, other customer service impacts, and damage to reputation in the view of current and potential customers, shareholders, workforce and suppliers.

Ill health represents a burden to individuals (e.g. coping with pain, suffering and diminished function), their dependents (e.g. reduced income in the family), the local community (e.g. reduced capacity), and society at large (e.g. increased inequalities and healthcare costs). However, on the positive side, work and the rewards it brings allow full participation in our society, leading to better health, particularly mental health. This applies both to the individual and the community as a whole as there are inextricable links between health, work and the economy at both local and national levels. On the contrary, unemployment is associated with
reduced psychological wellbeing, and is an important determinant of inequalities in health among adults of working age in the UK, with people lower down the social scale being most affected.

Cost of ill health to your organisation
• Sickness absence costs UK employers around £12.2 billion each year. Between 2% and
16% of the annual UK salary bill is spent on sickness absence.
• The cost of making reasonable adjustments to keep an employee who develops a health
condition or disability will almost certainly be far lower than the cost of recruiting and
training a new employee.
• Stress-related conditions and musculoskeletal disorders are now the most common
reported causes of sickness absence from work in the UK.
• An estimated 34 million days a year are lost in England and Wales through sickness
absence resulting from smoking-related illness.
• Physical inactivity has major health consequences – including obesity, coronary heart disease and cancer – and in England is estimated to cost the wider economy £8.2 billion per year.

The context
The workplace has a powerful effect on the health of employees. How healthy a person
feels affects their productivity, and how satisfied people are with their job affects their health. Evidence shows that when organisations improve their working environments by organising work in ways that promote health, all related adverse health outcomes – including injury and absenteeism – decrease.
In the UK in 2001-02, 2,328,000 people believed that they were suffering from an illness caused or made worse by their work, and an estimated 32.9 million working days were lost through illness caused or made worse by work.3 Musculoskeletal disorders (particularly those affecting the back and upper limbs), followed by stress, anxiety and depression, were by far the most commonly reported work-related illnesses.

Easy steps an employer can take
1 Be aware of your responsibilities as an employer under the Health and Safety at Work Act and associated legislation. www.hse.gov.uk
2 Consult with your employees on what concerns they have about their health and safety in the workplace, and involve them in the development of any initiatives that aim to improve their health and safety.
3 Carry out risk assessments. Assess the possible risks to the health and safety of your employees – both physical and psychological – from their work. www.hse.gov.uk
4 Lead by example. Employees are more likely to take health and safety seriously if they can see that you, the employer, are serious about these issues.
5 Consider how you could use internal or contracted-in occupational safety and health services to improve the health of your employees. www.facoccmed.ac.uk,
www.nhsplus.nhs.uk, www.poosh.org

Special groups
Pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers
Pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers require additional risk assessments. For
example, exposure to some chemicals may be harmful to the foetus. In addition, working shifts or long hours, manual handling or other physical exertion all need to be re-assessed on an individual basis for a pregnant employee. The HSE has produced guidance for new and expectant mothers which can be downloaded from www.hse.gov.uk/mothers/.

Older people
Older workers are less prone to accidents than younger people but they may initially be less adaptable to changes in the workplace. However, given appropriate training and methods of induction this can be overcome, so it is particularly beneficial to give older people support in learning new ways of working.7


Source:

Professor Rod Griffiths, CBE, President, Faculty of Public Health, Dr David Snashall
President, Faculty of Occupational Medicine, Creating a Healthy Work Place, 2006
www.facoccmed.ac.uk.