Timely intervention keeps staff healthy

With reference to your news story ‘Subjective complaints are the biggest cause of sickness absence’ (PersonnelToday.com, 10 June), by concentrating on absentee figures, you only see the tip of the iceberg.

A good employer will seek out factors that might cause problems and deal with them before they do. For instance, as a proportion of the workforce in offices, very few are absent for the reasons Christine Owen from Mercer gives (stress and musculoskeletal problems, such as back pain) but the majority of people are uncomfortable. What is the cost in inefficiency of this discomfort? Is that cost less than the price of the effort needed to reduce or eliminate it?

Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance

Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday

Email(Required)

OptOut

From time to time, we will send you emails about selected products, events and services from Personnel Today and OHW+ - but you can choose to opt-out at any time. If you do not wish to receive these emails, please tick this box.

Name

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Δ

Prevention pays. As Owen says, good managerial and clinical intervention is the key. But don’t wait until people complain.

Hugh Babington Smith
Managing director
Etcom People Engineers