Workplace Health Connections

The Developing Patient Partnerships charity is to close because the Department of Health won’t fund it beyond April 2008. The charity has since 1997 worked to promote good health messages to patients and better use of GP services . The timing is a bit odd to say the least – just when Dame Carol Black is about to announce her recommendations on the health of working age people, a big part of which is going to be about promoting healthier lifestyles and trying to get rid of the sick note culture.

Here's something that's a real sign of the times. If you've been following the stories about the social networking website Facebook you'll know that people use it to stay in touch with friends and contacts and make new ones.

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.

Personnel Today’s top story this week is about a report by charity Working Families showing that the right to request flexible working introduced in 2003 isn’t having an effect. Employers deny this. Now there’s a turn up for the books. Come on boys, let’s get real.

Is it true that men don’t take an interest in their health? The stereotype which I accepted as gospel truth until about 10 minutes ago is that men won’t go for health checks or turn up at health and wellbeing days at work because they don’t care about their health. At conferences on occupational health, speakers have said that the problems is that health screening attracts only women and the worried well, usually both. Men who have actually got something wrong with them are even less likely to go and see a doctor or nurse because they’re frightened it might be something serious and would rather die in ignorance than find out.

This blog’s main aim is to get people with responsibility for workplace health talking to each other and collaborating, as our millions of enthusiastic readers know. In keeping with that, here are two opportunities to win an award for delivering good workplace health services in 2008 and they are both free to enter.

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.

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.