Guest blog by Amy McKeown, Strategist and Consultant in Organisational Health, Mental Health and Wellbeing
One of the missed opportunities in my work as a workplace health, mental health and wellbeing consultant is how occupational health (OH) is used. To be blunt, it usually is not. Or, it is in some limited capacity that means that an organisation misses the benefits of having OH.
This baffles me as OH can build and transform approaches to managing health, mental health, and wellbeing. With long term and mental illness at all-time high many organisations are struggling to remain productive and profitable. The number of employees absent is putting pressure on those left. I am also seeing growing cynicism with the level of mental health related absence and the seeming ease there is now to get a GP to write a ‘fit note’ signing off employees for weeks at a time.
OH could and should be used to challenge this. It should be the linchpin that an organisation organises the rest of their health, mental health, and wellbeing around: Providing input and knowledge into prevention and health education or wellbeing programmes, guiding Line Managers and HR in managing and supporting absence (including managing more people in the workplace), and being a key stakeholder in wellbeing strategy development.
Some of the reasons I can see that this isn’t happening are:
- Organisations don’t understand what OH is - This means people don’t use it or are reluctant to use it fearing that confidential information will be shared. Many do not understand the difference between a GP and OH.
- The OH service is not set up properly - I once saw two OH in an office in London supporting a workforce of thousands! Better strategic procurement of OH, combining virtual, telephone and face to face appointments to support different models of work, with Service Level Agreements to ensure triage is essential.
- OH is not built into the Absence Management Policy or guidelines - Many Absence Management policies focus on discretionary sick pay and can be quite legal in format, protecting the organisation by setting out the parameters of how employee pay is impacted by illness. Most don’t provide clear guidelines and the different roles and responsibilities in managing absence, return to work or supporting employees in the workplace. Even less include OH other than to mention an employee may get sent there. OH should be a key player in absence with employees being routinely sent there to get an independent view of how they should be supported. This could include mandatory referral for specific health conditions or concerns. There should be clear guidance as to who refers to OH and how they, the employee, Line Manager and HR work together.
- The knowledge and understanding from OH is not adequately incorporated into the wellbeing strategy or programme - Few health, mental health, and wellbeing strategies I see include OH as a key stakeholder. This misses their expertise and experience in knowing what issues are currently being seen across the organisation, how to manage absence effectively and using their clinical knowledge and insistence on an evidence base to make decisions about other providers or health prevention work.
It is encouraging to see things starting to move in the right direction with the recent budget recognising the importance of OH to workplace health and wellbeing.
That said, it still amazes me that organisations are not figuring this out themselves. Giving all employees access to a well set up and integrated OH service, that is embedded into a strategic health, mental health and wellbeing strategy will drive improved health, engagement, and productivity. This will improve profitability and the bottom line - Surely something that all organisations want?
Amy McKeown is an Award-Winning Strategist and Consultant in Organisational Health, Mental Health and Wellbeing with more than 20 years of experience working with organisations of all sizes including multi-nationals, FTSE 100s, big 4 accountants, SMEs and start-ups.