Dame Carol Black will make her recommendations about the health of working age people this month. She says the hardest part to write was the advice for employers. How do you tackle the terrible line managers and toxic corporate cultures behind the epidemic in stress and MSDs? A lot of people call these the ‘soft issues’, the fluffy, namby-pampy stuff for the cissys to mop up when the real men have done the hard, important stuff. When you’ve got a man’s job to do you bring in the employment lawyers, die-hard OH and safety traditionalists, doctors (and nurses) and HR. They do the regulations, exposure limits, key performance indicators. Well hard, isn’t it?
The problem is that most of this is just risk management. It doesn’t add value, engage employees, raise productivity. It’s a cliché but the soft stuff is actually the hard stuff. So – think you’re hard enough for a bit of positive psychology then, do you ? Go ahead, punk, make my day.