The CBI has launched a ‘taskforce’ to tackle long-term sickness and resulting economic inactivity, including the role and value of workplace health interventions.
The move follows the focus on long-term ill health in both the Budget last month and the government’s publication of its long-awaited health and disability white paper.
The business body’s Health & Work Taskforce will come up with new ideas and solutions to improving the UK’s health and wellbeing over the next 18 months.
It said this could include ways to put in place more business-led health interventions, such as free health screening, employee assistance programmes and workplace ergonomic assessments.
All of these could contribute up to £36 billion in output to the economy through a 20% reduction in the impact of ill health on our collective workforce, it said.
“That’s why partnership between industry and government is crucial within this Parliamentary term,” the CBI added.
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The taskforce is being backed by the TUC and the Health Foundation as well as business leaders. It will recommend and implement near-term actions that, the CBI has argued, will lead to long-term benefits.
“The taskforce will identify what UK industry can do to improve the health of their workforces and the working age population more broadly. It will also identify where government can provide signals, framework and incentives to help the whole economy to value health investment more proactively,” the industry body said.
Officials, regulators, and industry leaders will be brought together over an eight to 12-week period.
They will work to “identify levers” that the government and industry can pull within 18 months to support the health of the working age population and reset the UK’s trajectory on societal ill health.
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The recommendations will be publicised at the CBI’s Inaugural Healthier Nation Conference in late September. The long-term sickness taskforce is also intended to feed in practical solutions for consideration to the chancellor in time for the Autumn Statement.
Brian McBride, CBI president, said: “A competitive and growing economy can only be built with a healthy and resilient labour market. Our current ‘deal’ on prevention in the UK doesn’t incentivise employers sufficiently and industry’s expertise and reach feels like an untapped resource for resetting our trajectory on societal ill health.”
