All Healthcare and wellbeing articles – Page 248

  • Article

    Joy Reymond: How to deal with cancer

    2013-03-25T00:00:00Z

    Four in 10 people will develop cancer at some point in their life, but it remains a difficult subject to talk about, especially in the workplace.On the upside, more people are living with cancer than ever before, thanks to better awareness of diet and fitness and advances in treatments. Those ...

  • Article

    Paul Shires: Business benefits of an effective health strategy

    2013-03-25T00:00:00Z

    With the National Health Service (NHS) under pressure to save £20 billion by 2015 and sickness absence costing UK employers about £9 billion a year, employers are under great pressure to ensure the right strategy is in place to manage employee health and wellbeing. But what are the benefits for ...

  • Article

    Vanessa Sallows: Group risk benefits help sick staff return to work

    2013-03-25T00:00:00Z

    Group risk benefits must be used in conjunction with a comprehensive and tailored strategy to help employees return to work.Returning to work can be daunting for an employee who has been absent for a long time. Individuals often have concerns about the information they share with colleagues about the cause ...

  • Analysis

    How to legally rehabilitate employees back to work

    2013-03-25T00:00:00Z

    The staggering cost of employee absence to UK plc is £9 billion per year, according to The Sickness absence review, presented to government by Dame Carol Black, national director for Health at Work, and David Frost, former director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, in November 2011. So it ...

  • Article

    Alison Green: How to manage PMI costs

    2013-03-25T00:00:00Z

    The wide range of private medical insurance (PMI) products available means there has never been more, or better, ways of managing their cost.There are also myriad ways employers can manage these costs, from introducing an excess, so staff pay, say, the first £200 towards their treatment, to setting an annual ...

  • Article

    David Castling: Managing sickness absence effectively

    2013-03-25T00:00:00Z

    Employers seeking to limit and manage employee absence require a clearly defined absence policy, which strikes a balance between supporting the majority of staff whose absence is genuine and preventing those who might seek to exploit the business. This policy needs to align with an organisation’s business objectives and define ...

  • Analysis

    How to reduce sickness absence

    2013-03-25T00:00:00Z

    Health and work are intrinsically linked. Worklessness due to ill health has huge, adverse effects on individuals, businesses and the public sector, and consequently the economy as a whole. It is an area of policy where England is falling behind other countries, so much so that the annual cost of ...

  • Article

    Buyer's guide to corporate eyecare 2013

    2013-03-25T00:00:00Z

    Corporate eyecare benefits are popular with employees, enabling them to look after the health of their eyes with regular examinations. For an employer, the perk helps to meet some of its health and safety obligations.Under the 1992 Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipment) Regulations, employers have a legal obligation to ...

  • Analysis

    Round-up of health and wellbeing research 2-12 to 2013

    2013-03-25T00:00:00Z

    Employee Benefits has perused the past year’s health and wellbeing research to pull out the top issues that employers and employees are facing around workplace health.Mounting workplace stress, absence management and the affordability of healthcare benefits have been some of the biggest concerns in 2012 and early 2013.The Employee Benefits/Cigna ...

  • Analysis

    How to integrate fitness into a health strategy

    2013-03-21T16:26:00Z

    Providing opportunities for physical activity to employees, particularly those who do not meet current criteria for such activity, has many benefits for employees and employers.The advantages of physical activity are well-established: lower obesity rates, increased psychological wellbeing, lower levels of stress and depression, and less risk of cardiovascular disease, type ...

  • Article

    TR Fleet partners Specsavers for driver risk management

    2013-03-01T00:00:00Z

    Fleet consultancy TR Fleet has formed a partnership with Specsavers Corporate Eyecare to tackle the issue of poor eyesight and driver safety.Employers that use TR Fleet’s DriveSecure risk-management programme issued with Specsavers vouchers for free eye tests for their staff.The system will identify the drivers who are considered to be ...

  • Article

    WPA launches medical diagnostic cover

    2013-03-01T00:00:00Z

    Health plan provider WPA has launched a service to help cover employees’ private consultations and diagnostic procedures.Swift Diagnosis has been designed to enhance WPA’s existing cash plan product, NHS Top-Up, and aims to fill the gap between GP and in-patient care.The scheme, which is avaliable from 1 April 2013, also ...

  • Article

    Work Foundation calls on government to help staff with cancer

    2013-03-01T00:00:00Z

    The government should do more to support people with long-term conditions, such as cancer, in returning to work, according to the Work Foundation. Its Returning to work: Cancer survivors and the health and work assessment and advisory service report paper has been written in partnership with Macmillan Cancer Support.The organisations ...

  • Article

    Employer tax relief introduced on health benefits

    2013-03-01T00:00:00Z

    Budget 2013: The government is to introduce tax relief on up to £500-worth of health-related interventions funded by employers in a move designed to tackle long-term sickness absence and help staff return to work.As announced in January 2013, it is creating the health and work assessment and advisory service, targeted ...

  • Article

    BBC's sickness absence not due to stress

    2013-03-01T00:00:00Z

    The BBC has disclosed that only 0.18% of working days were recorded as lost due to stress, anxiety and/or depression between April 2011 and March 2012.Following a Freedom of Information request by LondonlovesBusiness.com, the Daily Mail reported that the broadcaster spent £130,000 on stress counselling for staff in 2012.A spokesperson ...

  • Article

    NHS trusts spent £1bn on sick pay in three years

    2013-03-01T00:00:00Z

    NHS trusts in England spent more than £1 billion on sick pay over the past three years, according to research by the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP).The research, Fit enough for patients? An audit of workplace health and wellbeing services for NHS staff, looked at documents for 163 trusts, which ...

  • Article

    E.On launches eyecare platform

    2013-02-26T07:22:00Z

    Utilities firm E.On has launched an eyecare scheme to simplify how its 11,500 UK employees can take up the benefit.Employees can now order eyecare vouchers directly from provider Edenred via an online portal. This replaces E.On’s previous system which required staff to reclaim relevant eyecare costs through expenses.The portal enables ...

  • Article

    Iain Laws: Is open-referral private PMI right for employers?

    2013-02-25T00:00:00Z

    The adoption of open referral by most insurers demonstrates growing employer demand and employee comfort with this approach. We recognise there will always be employers that place more importance on having a choice of consultants and treatment, so we support open referral as a design option rather than compulsion for ...

  • Article

    Colin Boxall: Is open-referral private PMI right for employers?

    2013-02-25T00:00:00Z

    Advo Group supports the concept of open referral, but with choice retained. Our job is to listen, understand and advise, including telling employers things they may not want to hear.Our [employer] clients’ view of open referral is in two camps. The ?rst is the positive: seeing sustainability, cost control, no ...

  • Article

    Charles Alberts: Is open-referral private PMI right for employers?

    2013-02-25T00:00:00Z

    The important questions are: are premiums becoming more sustainable, and are employees who use the schemes satis?ed?Open referral promises to give employers more cost control, an attractive proposition in an environment where premiums often rise by double digits. This will be dif?cult to monitor because most schemes are subject to ...