BHSF conducts 3,500 remote health assessments for pandemic-hit firms

Health and wellbeing provider BHSF has conducted 3,500 ‘contact free’ return-to-work medical assessments in the past six months.

Its occupational health team delivered the remote assessments for 16,000 clients, many of whom are in critical industries, including logistics, manufacturing and engineering, and which needed to ensure employees were fit for work after Covid-19-related absences.

It also processed 2,000 new starter questionnaires for employers that had bolstered their workforces.

Stress, depression and anxiety were the most common work-related health issues identified by BHSF in the past six months, accounting for 51% of all cases and 55% of working days lost.

Fiona McGill, senior clinician at BHSF, said: “In a typical year, our team of practitioners will be out on the road delivering health assessments and screening across a variety of workplace settings. Clearly all this came to an abrupt end in such an extraordinary year but, despite a significant reduction in active workforces, the need to get employees safely back to work and increasingly back out on the road, became critical.

“Contact-free delivery has been vital to so many business sectors, so that is exactly what we have mirrored with our screening services this year, helping ensure continuity at a time when so much has been uncertain. Using video resources is vital to identify non-verbal cues and the feedback from struggling employees, along with overstretched HR managers, is that it delivers an assessment perfectly.

“The remote service has been our way of being responsive to specific constraints, but significantly it has also enhanced the overall speed and quality of the support that we’ve been able to offer,” she added.