Employers

Whatever your industry, size of business or location, there are things you can do for the health and wellbeing of your employees. Here are some ideas:

How can you help?

• Ensure that employees are not injured or made ill at work.
• Invest in improving the health and wellbeing of your staff - e.g. good occupational health support - this doesn’t need to be costly.
• Review and implement health, wellbeing and sickness absence policies and practices.
• Consider health when drafting all employment-related policies - good policies, well-implemented, can help reduce the risks of illness and help people return to work swiftly after illness.
• Train your managers to be better at dealing with sickness absence and return to work.
• Identify measures that will reduce general ill-health amongst employees.
• Use the workplace as an opportunity to promote healthy living.
• Support staff to remain in or quickly return to work when they develop health problems or disabilities - consider changing working patterns or making workplace adaptations.

The benefits for business

• Sickness absence costs business - the CBI estimates that 175 million working days were lost last year at a cost of £13 billion.
• Simple measures to prevent and manage ill-health can reduce absenteeism which in turn improves productivity and competitive edge.
• Getting employees back into work after illness reduces the loss of experienced staff and the cost of recruiting new staff.
• Healthy working environments reduce employee absence through sickness and stress.
• Employees who feel cared for are more satisfied and perform better - reducing staff turnover and increasing productivity.
• Being known as an organisation that cares about staff enhances your reputation and can help attract staff and customers.