Guest blog by Amy McKeown, Workplace Health Strategy Consultant
What does the future of occupational health look like? That was the question at the centre of a recent SOM podcast bringing together senior voices from occupational health (OH), occupational hygiene, HR, public policy and private sector provision. Perspectives were different, but together they raised a bigger question. Is the future simply about modernising OH, or a building a better, connected, system around health and work?
It is easy to answer questions about the future, technology wise. Artificial intelligence, digital platforms, and better data will all matter. But the more immediate issue is whether OH is being used properly in the first place.
Too often, OH is brought in after a problem has become established. Someone has been absent for several weeks. A fit note has been issued. A manager needs a report. The individual may already feel disconnected from work, while the employer is trying to understand what support is possible. OH can still add considerable value at that point. But the opportunity to prevent the problem, or intervene before it becomes entrenched, may already have been missed.
The future therefore requires OH earlier - not only assessing people once they are unwell. It should help organisations understand the health of their workforce, identify emerging risks, support managers earlier and shape the way work itself is designed. This is about making sure OH is used before absence, ill health or workplace conflict become the problem everyone is trying to solve.
The roundtable also challenged the assumption that broader provision must mean a weaker clinical model. Not everybody with a workplace health concern needs to see a doctor, just as not everybody with a headache needs to see a neurologist. Some cases require specialist clinical assessment and judgment. Others may need rehabilitation, a reasonable adjustment, occupational hygiene input, better management or a change in the way work is organised. The skill lies in knowing the difference.
This points towards a more multidisciplinary model, with OH working more effectively alongside occupational hygiene, nursing, rehabilitation, HR, health and safety, managers and appropriately trained non-clinical professionals. The aim should not be to medicalise every workplace difficulty, nor to remove clinicians from the system. It should be to use clinical expertise where it adds most value and create clearer routes into the other forms of support people may need.
This is not only about the future of a profession. It is about the health of the working-age population and the kind of working lives we are trying to support.
Work is not only about income. At its best, it provides purpose, confidence, social connection and a place within a wider community. That matters for people already in work, those trying to return and those who have not yet found a secure route into employment. It also matters when health needs change across the life course. Women’s and reproductive health provides an example. Menopause, menstrual health, fertility treatment, pregnancy and baby loss can all affect someone’s ability to remain and progress in work. Yet the answer is not always another clinical intervention. It may be an informed manager, a practical adjustment, greater flexibility, a healthier culture or timely access to specialist OH advice.
People do not always need to be removed from work in order to be supported. Often, they need work to be adapted around what is happening in their lives.
A further theme was the way employers buy and manage workplace health services. Many organisations now commission OH, employee assistance, physiotherapy, mental health support, wellbeing platforms and digital tools through different teams and budgets. HR may buy one service, reward another and benefits a third, with responsibility for managing them sitting somewhere else again.
What looks like a wide-ranging offer can therefore become a collection of disconnected services. Employees may not know where to go, managers may not understand what each service is for, and organisations can find themselves measuring appointment times, report prices and platform use rather than whether people are actually healthier, better supported or more able to remain in work.
The market will respond to what employers ask for. If procurement is fragmented or focused too narrowly on cost, provision will reflect that. OH therefore has an important role in helping employers become more informed purchasers, bringing greater coherence to the services they offer and making sure fashionable interventions do not crowd out those with a stronger evidence base.
Technology and AI may reduce some of the more transactional elements of case management, administration and reporting. Used well, that could create more time for the work that depends on professional judgment, ethical oversight, complex decision making and a real understanding of the relationship between health and someone’s job.
The future will depend on connecting areas that are too often treated separately: clinical expertise and non-clinical support, prevention and treatment, employers and providers, health and the realities of work. OH does not need to become something entirely different: It needs to be used earlier, more widely and as part of a system that actually joins up.