Supporting a Healthy Workforce
Professor Diana Kloss MBE
Chair, Council for Work and Health
Working for a Healthier Tomorrow
• This was the first report of Dame Carol Black (2008)
about the health of the working population and the
importance of OH services. She said:
• “Achieving a comprehensive service for the future
requires much more than simply integration. It
demands leadership from the professions to seize this
opportunity and to make the specialty of occupational
health relevant to present-day needs. It can only be
done by expanding the remit of OH to include all those
of working age, and working with other specialtiesboth medical and non-medical-in order to achieve
this.”
• The report led to a system of accreditation of OH
services, recently extended to physiotherapists
(SEQOHS)
• It led to the introduction of the GP fit note,
followed by the Black/Frost report (2011) on
sickness absence, which gave birth to the Fit for
Work Service, which has now been rolled out
throughout England, Wales and Scotland,
providing publicly funded skilled advice to
employees and employers about return to work
after sickness absence of 4 weeks
The Council for Work and Health
www.councilforworkandhealth.org.uk
• And it led to the creation of a Council for Work
and Health, representing all the organisations
involved in protecting the health of the working
population and providing occupational health
services
• It has the great strength that it is multidisciplinary and includes representatives from the
health and safety professionals as well as those
providing care
• It also includes representatives from the TUC, the
CBI, PHE, and the Department of Health
For the future?
• Things have been moving fast in the health, work and wellbeing
field
• There is an even greater need for the professions to speak with one
voice
• The proposal that the Faculty and Society of Occupational Medicine
should become a single organisation has not achieved the
necessary support of all their members, but they are now working
closely together, eg the July conference in Manchester
• However, at present the Council is the only body that represents all
the professions
• A National School of Occupational Health was launched by Health
Education England in 2014. At present it only deals with doctors,
but the plan is gradually to extend it to other health professionals,
especially nurses and physiotherapists
Planning the future
• In 2013 a Project Working Group was set up by the
Council to deliver a vision of good work and health in
the UK for the next 5-20 years and the professional
resources to deliver it. It is chaired by Professor John
Harrison, an occupational physician and Dean of the
National School, and the research fellow is Leonie
Dawson, an occupational physiotherapist
• The research is supported by funds from Syngentis and
Public Health England, and from the Council
• The first part of the report was published in April 2014
(see the Council website) and the second part is
nearing completion
NICE PHAC Committee
• Workplace health: policy and management
practices [NG 13]
• Date of publication: June 2015
• www.nice.org.uk
• It concentrates particularly on the role of the
line manager
Principal recommendations
• Create an organisation committed to
workplace health and wellbeing, ensure a safe
and healthy physical work environment,
create a supportive environment to help
employees avoid the negative effects of stress,
ensure fairness and justice throughout the
organisation, encourage participation, provide
leadership, empower line managers, design
jobs that are not damaging and if possible
have a positive effect on health and wellbeing
• Management makes the decisions, but they
need the advice and assistance of well-trained
competent professionals
What do they do?
•
They advise managers on their legal obligations and assist them to comply with the
law, for example:
•
Safety officers on prevention of accidents and disease, eg control methods,
protective equipment, RIDDOR
Statutory health surveillance, for example under the Control of Vibration at Work
Regulations 2005 (nurses and doctors), monitoring of noise and dust levels
(hygienists) to comply with COSHH
Advise on the avoidance of musculoskeletal disease and the treatment of MSD
(ergonomists and physiotherapists)
Advise on the definition of disability under the Equality Act 2010 and make
recommendations for reasonable adjustments for disabled employees, supporting
employees in the process of rehabilitation (doctors, nurses, vocational
rehabilitation specialists, occupational therapists)
Advise on the prevention of undue workplace stress and provide treatment for
stressed workers (psychologists)
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What do they do?
• They assist the manager in assessing fitness for work both preemployment and in employment, eg blood tests for HCWs with
blood-borne viruses, physical fitness tests for police and firefighters
• They assist the manager in advising on sickness absence and return
to work, and if this is not possible dismissal and ill-health
retirement
• NB the NICE guidelines suggest that over aggressive return to work
procedures can encourage presenteeism to the detriment of the
organisation
• Reducing the numbers of days off sick should not be the only
yardstick for an efficient service
• The Work Foundation Report (2010) estimated that employees’
substandard performance at work when unfit costs one and a half
times more to the economy that the cost of sickness absence
What do they do?
• They assist in advising on and developing healthy living policies and
programmes in the workplace
• This is achieving wide recognition, for example see Simon Stevens’
“Five Year Forward”, statement on the future of the NHS (2014):
• NHS Employers should create new incentives to support 1.3m
employees to stay healthy and be “health ambassadors”, eg
providing healthy food, especially on the night shift, encouraging
weight reduction, quitting smoking, adopting the HSE Management
Standards for Work Related Stress, and “review with the Faculty of
Occupational Medicine the strengthening of occupational health”.
• Simon Stevens announced an ambitious programme to promote
the health and wellbeing of NHS employees on 2 September 2015,
concentrating on healthy food, opportunities for exercise in the
workplace, free health checks of mental health and MSK health for
employees over 40, and OH service for GPs suffering from stress.
What needs to be done?
• We need to recruit and train more health professionals,
particularly doctors and nurses, in occupational health
• We need to define the essential competencies of the
professionals in order to optimise training and assessment
• We need to persuade employers that the health of their
workers is a vital economic resource and that they cannot
afford not to support healthy living programmes
• We need to encourage employees to take responsibility for
their own health
• We need to audit and to do research into what works best