However, a thought has crossed my mind in recent years, once again in response to my own children's development. My son was fanatical about football in his junior school but when he went to secondary school and didn't make it into the football team he became disillusioned and lost all interest. It seems to me that if schools are going to encourage more children to take part in sport they need to balance the competitive element by offering chances for kids of all ability to play in a team. As we all know, playing sport is not just a way of developing athleticism but also of developing team skills and self esteem - attributes that you need in spades in the world of grown up employment.
The Olympics is great for encouraging people to strive for world class sporting skills, but we should also look for ways to encourage those of us with more modest sporting ability to join in - especially teenagers.
]]>A report from the University of York looks at the evidence that return to work interventions for mental health problems can cut the numbers on sick leave, while the government's Vocational Rehabilitation Taskforce has launched evidence showing that nine out of 10 people can be moved back into employment given the right basic healthcare and management.
Business has given its blessing to the welfare reforms, no doubt encouraged by promises to double the amount of funding available for employers who make adjustments to get incapacitated people back to work.
It is almost three years since the Health Work and Wellbeing strategy was launched in October 2005 and the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle are still falling into place.
Of course it is ultimately down to individual people to take responsibility for their health and once again the evidence is there to show that given education and encouragement most of us are prepared to do so.
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For example, if employees are exempt from tax when their employers provide an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) (which allows staff to discuss health issues not related to their work), then why should an employee be taxed when their employer pays for them to join a private gym? Currently there is tax relief when a big employer provides a gym or sports facilities but employees in smaller firms are penalised if their employer pays for private gym membership. This is a barrier to smaller employers investing in the health of their staff. How can this tax regime be justified when the Black review points out that the vast majority of employees without access to occupational health are working for small and medium sized companies.
Then there is the issue of tax on employers who spend to get sick staff back to work. Even if the government baulks at introducing tax incentives for employer spending that promotes health among people who are not incapacitated, surely it should provide tax exemptions for all spending on vocational rehabilitation, regardless of whether the illness or injuries are solely work-related or not. Currently if an employer pays for an employee's treatment to get them back to work for reasons which are not solely work-related the employee has to pay tax on it. Yet there are often long waiting lists on the NHS meaning treatment is provided too late to stop the employee swelling the ranks of those on incapacity benefits. Taxing the employee completely contradicts the aims of Dame Carol Black's recommendations.
Realistically, employers may prove reluctant to help fund a national OH service without any financial support.The government should consider reinvesting some of the money it plans to save by cutting the numbers on incapacity benefits to support employers who are expected to foot the bill for getting sick employees back to work. This may have to be done through private medical insurance (PMI). However, up until now the government has had a very Old Labour suspicion of PMI despite its aim introduce more private sector investment into the NHS. The solution is to introduce tax exemptions on PMI and the use of private medical services only when they are used for the purposes of vocational rehabilitation. Surely that would be a more joined up way to achieve the government's objectives for the health of working age people.
The government is due to respond to the Black review in the autumn and if it fails to address the non-sensical tax system it will be failing employers, employees and itself.
]]>This issue worries me. Maybe I'm making too light of a serious issue but isn't it the case that medical terminology is particularly hard to spell and being good at recognising one condition or treatment from another is a required skill for the job?
Conceptually the whole idea of 'disability' as covered by the Disability Discrimination Act is problemmatic as far as I'm concerned. The law should be there to protect people from discrimination which is not relevant to the job or profession. Therefore, discrimination on the grounds of ability that is relevant to the job is surely reasonable? For some professions, dyslexia is going to make someone less able to do the job than another person without the 'disability'. It doesn't seem unreasonable in medicine to require students to be able to distinguish between technical terms reasonably quickly and accurately. But this is an issue where feelings tend to run high so I expect others may disagree.
]]>Obviously there is a big opportunity for cookie manufacturers to book advertising space during TV programmes involving lots of death, but the implication for people with responsibilities for workplace health are more obscure. Perhaps, as well as advising staff to give up smoking and join a gym, we should be warning them about the danger of watching too much of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation or The Bill .
The research, "The Sweet Escape: Effects of Mortality Salience on Consumption Quantities for High- and Low-Self-Esteem Consumers", appears in the Journal of Consumer Research, . For more information email natherton@noirsurblanc.com.
]]>Meanwhile Lord McKenzie announced that on 17 July the Vocational Rehabilitation Taskforce will be publishing an evidence review of the cost effectiveness of interventions on musculoskeletal disorders, mental health, cardiovascular respiratory conditions. He added that Dame Carol Black is going to be 'supporting' the government's first ever do-ordinated strategy for mental health at work. This starts on 10 July with a meeting of eminent experts from business and academic medicine.
Finally, if you don't know already the government has produced a tool for employers to help them assess the cost benefit of interventions in occupational health, based on consultancy PWC's report earlier this year. If you want to volunteer your company as a pilot just click here and you can download the tool for free.
]]>There is the question of who is going to provide these OH services. The SOM seems to be fixated on OH doctors and nurses doing it but in reality there are never going to be enough available and a lot of the services are not of a primarily clinical nature in any case, for example "benefits advisers and others associated with workplace wellbeing" to quote the SOM. There are also case managers, disability assessors and a range of other services which are unlikely to be provided by doctors or nurses.
For the time being it is safe to assume that employers will be footing the bill for OH for some time to come.
Can someone more used to selling baked beans boost the health of staff in the NHS? Clare Chapman, former HR boss at Tesco, and now NHS workforce director general is about to introduce some private sector style health promotion which might ruffle the feathers of die hard occupational health traditionalists in the NHS ranks.
Chapman has hired wellbeing consultancy Vielife to deliver two-year pilots in 10 NHS trusts. The link of health and wellbeing with productivity will raise some OH eyebrows. The NHS OH group are often seen as quite different culturally from their business-minded peers in the private sector, even by their own colleagues. Observers of the Jiscmail forum will have noticed that infection control and health assessment questionnaires tend to get more airplay than pedometers and healthy eating. They might ask if a NHS stuggling to keep hospitals free from bugs like MRSA should be focusing on dispensing healthy eating pamplets.
Chapman has the government's backing though. Dame Carol Black, in her recommendations on work and health earlier this year, called for the public sector to lead by example in improving the health of the workforce. And it is difficult to argue against an intervention which could cut NHS absence rates. Provided that Chapman's pilots do not take funds from basic risk management they should be welcomed.
]]>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.
]]>I came across the information this week when I was chairing an IRS conference on managing stress. Here is a round-up of the hot ideas that came up for anyone interested in managing their own stress or responsible for stress management in an organisation:
There - I bet you feel better already.
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For years, HR and occupational health specialists have had an uneasy feeling about home-working and health and safety. The increasing use of mobile technology such as laptop computers, blackberrys and mobile phones with or without internet access means that risk management and health surveillance may have to extend beyond the home office into the car, the train and even the local Starbucks.
Microsoft want to publicise this to sell their ergonomically designed hardware but this issue goes beyond this into work design and practices, including working hours. Maybe now is the moment to dust off the policy on home-working and make sure your organisation is covered against absence costs or a potential costly tribunal claim. If you're old enough to remember the early days of RSI then you'll know that the condition does seem to be catching too (if one person in a department gets it, others will follow) and it is notoriously difficult to get an accurate diagnosis of the cause.
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The latest opportunity is a new category in the Personnel Today Awards, the Award for Health at Work. If you’ve been to this event before you’ll know it is quite a bash, so well worth getting on the shortlist. You’ve only got a month left to enter so get to work on your entries now. I know for a fact that there are lots of you doing innovative things who can demonstrate the benefits for staff and the organisation alike.
Better still, there is no rule that bars you from entering both awards, doubling your chance of coming away with a trophy.
]]>The traditionalist approach doesn’t even make business sense. I recently went to a conference organised by the Beginnings campaign for disabled jobseekers and heard Robin McKenzie, director of strategy and transformation at BT, say that work life balance is the most important factor to BT graduate recruits. Seven out of 10 BT people work flexibly and productivity is higher among home workers. Do we really want to go on forever cramming ourselves with other commuters on public transport at the same time every morning and evening? Flexible working has my vote any day of the week.
Now someone in the marketing team at health cash plan firm HSA has latched onto this new-fangled interweb thingy and is launching a so-called health and lifestyle reminder service, the ‘HSA Personal Planner’. You can install this onto your unique profile and also download it onto your computer desktop. The idea is it then reminds you when you've got a 'lifestyle appointment' such as a dental appointment or a friend’s birthday. It also provides daily health tips and ‘Doctor, Doctor’ jokes. Yippee.
]]> Personally I know when it's time to go to the dentist because I hear a crunching sound and discover one of my teeth has found its way into my peanut butter sandwich.To install HSA Personal Planner either use the search engine on Facebook to find it or visit Sleeviebook, and download from there. I'm not getting a fee for writing this by the way.
While we're on the subject, I need more Facebook friends to make me look well connected so get prodding or whatever it's called now. It could be the start of a virtual relationship. Dirty Den need not apply.
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