This morning I went to a business breakfast organised by Business Action on Health, a group of larger employers who have committed themselves to good practice in health at work. The campaign aims to get 75% of FTSE companies to report employee wellbeing in their company reports by 2011. At the moment only 25 of them do so. The information has to be quantative too, not apple pie rhetoric (although I dare say that apple pie is off the menu on account of the refined flour, sugar and fat content). This would be a big step to getting health and wellbeing seen as a core strategic issue - a great aim, but not easy to achieve.
The campaign is organised by Business in the Community, an employer-led organisation which aims to make employers fairer and more responsible. BITC aims to get employers to invest in health at work by emphasising the impact on the employer brand and employee engagement. Research BITC launched today by YouGov involving 1,347 adults in the UK has found that three out of five workers would consider quitting employers who fail to address workplace health and safety and four out of five say this would influence whether they took a job.
The problem with getting commitment from senior managers though is trying to get them listening in the first place, when they have a lot of other priorities. Absence costs are a blunt weapon but may be the best way to get boardroom attention, suggested Peter MacDonald, HR director of Parcelforce, at the meeting.
At Parcelforce, which as part of Royal Mail is not able to compete on cost, the company's performance depends on making deliveries on time. The case for good absence management is clear. And you can produce key performance indicators for it which might look good in a company report.
Once you've whetted their appetite with some cost savings in cutting absence, the trick then will be to get managers to look at the business case for health and wellbeing interventions in the round.