Occupational health professionals have slammed this week’s Get Britain Working white paper as “very disappointing”, not least for completely overlooking the potential contribution the profession could make to the government’s ambitions.
The Department for Work and Pensions white paper, unveiled on Tuesday by work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall, is aimed at joining up health, skills and employment more effectively.
It includes a range of measures designed to tackle unemployment and economic inactivity. This includes targeting support at those who have been out of work with long-term physical and mental health conditions and disabilities.
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However, Society of Occupational Medicine (SOM) chief executive Nick Pahl described the white paper overall as “very disappointing”, and vowed that he would be raising it with as many MPs as he could over the coming weeks.
The paper’s announcement of an independent review into the role of employers in creating and maintaining healthy and inclusive workplaces was perhaps the most interesting element of it from an OH/workplace health perspective, he pointed out.
The review will run through to next summer and will, the paper said, “consider actions and make evidenced-based and practical recommendations that support employers to improve recruitment and retention of disabled people and people with health conditions, including via the new jobs and careers service prevent people becoming unwell at work and better support good, healthy workplaces to undertake early intervention for sickness absence and increase returns to work”.
Nevertheless, Pahl, posting on the social media platform LinkedIn, criticised the paper for its “lack of recognition of the role of occupational health to help people stay and return to work”.
He also highlighted the now-lost – even if glacially slow – reform agenda that had been put in place by the previous Sunak administration, which had included looking at incentives for investing in OH.
Others within the profession echoed Pahl’s concerns. “Seems an obvious miss to me,” said OH consultant Amy McKeown.
“I’m sure occupational health will find their space and voice. They are an incredibly needed part of the solution,” she added.
Kevin Bampton, chief executive of the British Occupational Hygiene Society (BOHS), said the white paper “ignores the 1.7 million people being made ill by poor workplace health protection”.
He added: “If you fail to ‘diagnose’ this as a significant contributing factor, your strategy is doomed from the outset!”
OH and wellbeing specialist Kwasi Opoku said: “From experience if one delves deeper into the ‘Healthy Workplaces’ slogan in most organisations, what you’ll find in most cases is an annual wellbeing day organised and driven by HR (which in itself is not a bad thing).
“However having proper policies and practices in place based on a professional ‘health needs assessment’ is almost always missing,” he added.
Health and safety consultant Tee Guidotti added: “I think the object here is to feel good about talking the talk, not to acknowledge that oh knows what to do to walk the walk.”
OH adviser Julie Luff agreed: “The experts are OH; very short-sighted of this weak government.
And OH physician Paul Baker described the white paper as simply another “push into long verdant foliage”.
Responding to the Get Britain Working white paper more widely, Mental Health First Aid England chief executive Sarah McIntosh called the independent review “timely and necessary”.
She added: “The approach set out in the paper must be centred in compassion. Not everyone is able to work. And, there are many people who would like to work who face stigma, barriers, and discrimination. If the government is serious about creating healthy and equitable workplaces, it must also take steps to tackle these. Working with businesses, will also be essential to change outdated attitudes and ill-judged assumptions on cost.”
Jack Latus, chief executive of OH provider Latus Group, said: “Every employee deserves access to healthcare, but right now, the majority who receive this care are those in larger businesses which have the resources to offer these benefits.
“Healthcare should be a given, not a luxury, and all businesses, regardless of size, need to be able to offer proper health services for their employees, without significant costs to their bottom line.”
He also called for “stronger incentives” to be put in place for businesses to invest in employee health and for consideration to be given for whether healthcare provision “should become a standard workplace benefit”.
He added: “In countries like France and Germany, businesses play a much bigger role in supporting their employee’s health and this model is worth considering if we seriously want to drive productivity and economic growth.”
Ben Harrison, director of the Work Foundation at Lancaster University, highlighted the risk that those with long-term health issues are not inadvertently pushed into insecure and low-quality work that will only serve to worsen their condition in the long run.
“It is critical that those with health conditions do not face the risk of losing their welfare entitlements should they attempt to return to the labour market and yet are unable to sustain work over the medium to long-term,” he said.
“While it is positive that the government intends to review the role of employers in creating healthy and inclusive workplaces for people with disabilities and chronic illnesses, this must underpin a much bigger focus from government and employers on retaining people in the workplace to begin with. Over the last year, on average 128 people per day have become economically inactive due to ill health. Without urgent action to stem this tide of people leaving the labour market, these reforms are unlikely to succeed,” Harrison added.
Finally, William Roberts, chief executive of the Royal Society for Public Health, echoed the need for access to healthcare to become a standard requirement, a minimum, within that workplace.
“Joining the dots between our workplaces and our health is absolutely critical to building a healthier Britain,” he said.
“Everyone employed in the UK should have the right to a healthy workplace. We hope the announced independent review into the role of UK employers in promoting health will recommend an ambitious level of minimum support for all employees,” Robertson added.
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