Offering Guidance and Support
to Employers to Reduce Work
Absence
Dr Justin Varney, National Lead for Adult Health and Wellbeing
Overview
• Assisting those who are already committed to
workplace health and wellbeing to strive for
excellence
• Enabling businesses to more accurately
measure and quantify their contribution to
employee health and wellbeing
• Disseminating information and best practice in
improving employee health and wellbeing
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The costs of ill health
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Link between health and sickness absence
Employee productivity can be difficult to
measure without relying on self-reported data.
But a number of studies have looked at the
impact of health and wellbeing on
productivity:
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•
An Australian study has suggested that
employees who are healthy can be nearly
three times more productive than
employees in poor health.
•
A Canadian study examining the link
between an employee’s emotional
wellbeing and their work productivity found
that a 20 percent drop in an employee’s
level of wellbeing leads to a 10 percent
drop in their performance.
Green Paper on Health and Work:
Improving Lives
• Joint green paper between DWP &
DH
• Consultation closed 17 Feb 2017
• Outlines the Government’s vision
on the potential and commitment to
workplace health
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Presentation title - edit in Header and Footer
Assisting those who are already
committed to workplace health
and wellbeing to strive for
excellence
Evidence-based workplace accreditation
Provide an employer roadmap for
implementation of evidence-based
guidance (e.g. NICE guidance)
Opportunity to link employers with
local public health offer and reduce
replication of services
60% local authorities have a scheme
in place, with some emerging sectorspecific schemes
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PHE’s support for all local evidence-based
workplace accreditation
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•
Support and encourage all local evidence-based workplace health
and wellbeing schemes which adhere to the National Standards.
•
Develop business to business tools for employers who do not want
to commit to a holistic accreditation e.g. Mental Health Toolkit for
Employers
•
Support sectoral approaches e.g. Blue Light Framework. To be
published in March 2017.
•
Guidance for local authorities on commissioning local workplace
health and wellbeing accreditation schemes for publication before
Summer 2017
•
Developing a workplace health page on gov.uk
Case studies: Impact of the Workplace Wellbeing
Charter, RAND Report
YMCA Cornwall
Days lost through absence
went down from 8.37 per
employee in 2010/11 to 4.75 in
2012/13 (the first year of gold
accreditation)
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Stefan et al. (2013) Lancet Diab Endocrinol
Employer toolkits
• Produced ‘with business for
business’ and developed with
leading experts
• Enables employers to
manage key health
challenges to their staff
• Aimed at SMEs but
applicable to large
businesses
• Mental Health Toolkit
published in May 2016
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Future toolkits for 2017:
• Musculoskeletal health
• Suicide prevention
• Suicide post-vention
One You
 One You is an integrated social marketing campaign to help adults to live more
healthily.
 Employers can support One You in the workplace by ordering an employer toolkit,
which includes conversation starters and dispensers, posters, wall charts, guerrilla
stickers and bunting.
 The quiz can be accessed: https://www.nhs.uk/oneyou/hay
 229 employer partners supporting One You launch – including commercial, noncommercial, national and regional organisations
 1,662,137 employees reached
 Notable employer organisations included British Airways, Jaguar Landrover, Ministry
of Defence and BT
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Britain's Healthiest Workplace
• 2013 Inception
• 400 companies and 100 000 employees have taken part in the study.
• Expert Advisory Board, chaired by Dame Carol Black
Benefits
•
•
•
•
•
Free to take part
Most comprehensive UK workplace wellness study
Holistic focus on health/wellbeing
Dual survey completed by employer/employees
Receive an organisational health report, employee health
assessments
• Participants receive recommendations and expert consultation
• Small, Medium, Large winners recognised in several categories
www.healthiestworkplace.co.uk
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Work with NHS England
1. A suite of interventions across 10 NHS pilot sites,
involving:
 On-site NHS health checks
 Better access to talking therapies, physiotherapy and weight
management services
 A local physical activity offer
 Accreditation under the Workplace Wellbeing Charter
2. A new nationally-specified occupational health service for GPs
3. National action raising food standards through catering contractors
and PFI providers
4. Supporting them with the 2017/18 CQUIN
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Enabling businesses to more
accurately measure and
quantify their contribution to
employee health and wellbeing
Health Needs Assessment (HNA) Tool
• Developed with SMEs in mind
• To be published in Spring 2017
• Designed to help employers find out
about staff health needs within their
organisation and to set a baseline of
employee health.
• Provides businesses with a short set of
survey questions to use as indicators.
• The questions aim to gather information
from employees which can also be
compared with national data so
employers know how their workplace
compares
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Call for evidence: Identifying what works for workplace
health and wellbeing interventions.
In spring 2017, PHE will be doing a doing a call for evidence (based on
Nesta standards of evidence) of interventions that support improving
health in the workplace.
Aims of the project:
• Contribute to the development of evidence based practice in
workplace health and evaluation of what works
• Support the development of methods to benchmark the state of
evidence around what works in improving health and wellbeing in
the workplace
• Generate a platform of evidence to inform future initiatives and
investment in workplace health and wellbeing
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• Sharing good practice in workplace health including behavioural and
organisational change and impact/outcomes
Presentation title - edit in Header and Footer
Disseminating information and
best practice
Disseminating information and best practice
•
Topic guides covering 9 core areas in which work place
interventions should target and guidance on how to do so
•
PHE is developing an ROI tool on the cost savings for the NHS
and local government on getting an individual from
unemployment to employment
•
PHE pump-primed a national academic network focused on
health and work
•
National Health and Work infographics published in September
2015.
•
Worked with partners to publish the following evidence reviews:
o Measuring employee productivity rapid review (2015)
o Physical environments - impact of on workplace health
(2015)
o Interventions to prevent burnout in high risk individuals stated
(2015)
o Peer support and employment (2016)
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Final Points
• Workplace health is a priority for PHE as workplaces are
a potentially efficacious and cost-effective location for
individual and population health improvement
• The Health, Work and Disability Green Paper outlines
the Government’s vision on the potential and
commitment to workplace health
• Workplace health interventions benefit employers,
individuals, statutory services and wider society
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Thank you!
[email protected]
Dr Justin Varney, National Lead for Adult Health and Wellbeing