Opinion – Page 15
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OpinionChris Pendrey: How to increase employees' health and safety awareness
According to the Health and Safety Executive's Health and safety statistics, published in November 2017, UK organisations lost over 31 million working days to workplace injuries alone in 2016-2017. The benefits, therefore, of defining an adherable health and safety plan are clear; greater productivity, reduced absenteeism and potentially lower costs ...
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OpinionDr Thomas Calvard: The health effects of presenteeism on employees
Presenteeism, or attending work while ill, has become a subject of interest in HR practice and research over the past decade. Since 2010, as reported by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) in its Health and wellbeing at work survey, most recently published in May 2018, presenteeism has ...
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OpinionKevin Yip: How can health and safety measures align with an organisation’s overall health and wellbeing strategy?
Workplace wellbeing is no longer a nice-to-have; it is an essential ingredient for creating thriving workplaces and productive organisations. More and more, we are seeing employers of all sizes investing in the health and wellbeing of their employees and looking at how to build happier and healthier workplaces.We seem to ...
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OpinionHelen Smith: Why caring commitments impact health and wellbeing
For those with family and caring commitments, balancing the often-conflicting elements of work and life can be a major cause of stress and mental health issues. Financial problems, loss of sleep, relationship breakdowns and many other triggers can affect emotional wellbeing, and all of this can in turn impact on ...
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OpinionProfessor Kirk Chang: Are incentives outdated?
There are thousands of types of incentives, but they usually fall into three main category bases: holiday, finance and workshop or training.These have been used around the world in various types of organisations, and they all have their positives and negatives. No reward system is perfect, but, in general, they ...
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OpinionDarren Towers: Making health and wellbeing inclusive for trans employees
We know that people perform better when they can be themselves, but trans staff face distinct challenges in the workplace, from physical spaces, such as gendered facilities, to direct harassment based on gender identity.Stonewall’s 2018 LGBT in Britain: Trans Report, published in January 2018, found that 51% of trans and ...
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OpinionDr Holly Blake: Increasing engagement with nutrition programmes
The number of organisations offering employee wellbeing programmes is on the increase. Healthy eating and weight management initiatives can contribute to prevention and management of obesity, as well as encourage healthy lifestyle choices among workforces.Nationally, obesity rates have risen 15% since 1993, according to NHS Digital statistics published in April ...
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OpinionDr Daniel Bailey: The impact of office life on employee health
Office life is often not good for our health. This is because our blood sugar levels, cholesterol and blood pressure can increase when sitting for extended periods, due to very limited muscle contractions, which help to control risk markers that lead to certain conditions.When sitting for long periods each day, ...
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OpinionJo Brewis: How to start conversations around the menopause at work
The menopause is largely a taboo subject at work, especially compared to pregnancy and maternity. Still, our experiences of presenting on this issue suggest that many, many women, and large numbers of men, are very eager to learn more about it and to share their own stories. So, employers may ...
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OpinionHelen Smith: Managing the wellbeing needs of a multigenerational workforce
Demographic change is expected to profoundly affect the UK labour market over the next two decades, and organisations today often have five different generations working side by side.Research shows that focusing on health, wellbeing and flexibility will help employers to improve employee satisfaction. However, it is crucial for organisations to ...
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OpinionLiz Egan: Supporting employees with cancer to live the best life possible
An estimated one in three people living with cancer in the UK are of working age, and this figure is set to increase to more than one million people by 2030. With more people working for longer and retiring later, employers need to be aware of the growing numbers with ...
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OpinionVicki Field: How to manage employees on long-term sick leave
Misconduct is generally straightforward; employees did something wrong and deserve the consequences. But being ill? And possibly losing their job as a result? HR is the the one making the decision, or advising on it, and it can be hard to work out the best approach that balances the needs ...
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OpinionRhiannon Jenkins: What should employers do when employees' annual leave plans are interrupted by sickness?
With summer fast approaching, many employees will already have organised their holidays and annual leave. Often, however, the best laid plans go awry. How should employers deal with requests from employees to cancel their pre-booked annual leave or retake holidays that have been interrupted by sickness?The leading case in this ...
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OpinionDuncan Young: How can employers help staff achieve good health?
Good health is not simply the absence of disease. This becomes apparent when a holistic approach to health and wellbeing is taken, which includes a range of elements that help people to thrive.Although good health is specific to each person, employers can help on the journey to increased wellbeing. Employees ...
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OpinionAnna McCaffrey: How will GDPR affect processing of employees’ healthcare benefits data?
The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into effect on 25 May 2018.The good news for employers is that many GDPR rights are similar to those under the current Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA).The bad news is that, as a general rule, GDPR expands existing rights, introduces a few ...
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OpinionTerry Woolmer: Private medical insurance benefits both employers and employees
EEF’s annual sickness absence surveys have consistently shown that employers believe some form of incentive to provide private medical insurance (PMI) for their employees would be beneficial. In EEF's Employee health: Making industrial strategy work for Britain – Health, work, wellbeing and sickness absence survey 2017, published in August 2016, ...
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OpinionProfessor Sir Cary Cooper: Managing stress and getting a better work-life balance
It was as long ago as 1851 when the social reformer John Ruskin reflected on the potential consequences of the Industrial Revolution: “In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: they must be fit for it, they must not do too much of ...
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OpinionLiz Egan: How to ensure staff and managers feel comfortable discussing cancer in the workplace
Each year, almost 120,000 people of working age are diagnosed with cancer in the UK, according to figures sourced from the Office for National Statistics, Welsh Cancer Intelligence and Surveillance Unit, ISD Scotland, and Northern Ireland Cancer Registry for UK 2012 cancer incidence among those aged 15-64. And with survival ...
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OpinionOlga Tregaskis: Workplace learning provides an opportunity to improve wellbeing
The joy we feel when we master a new skill, the sense of accomplishment we get from a job well done, the buzz we get from helping others or the fading of our anxieties as we see solutions yield results. This is wellbeing.We might reasonably expect, then, that training that ...
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OpinionJudith McNulty-Green: A holistic approach can support staff health at all ages
By 2030, it is expected that older workers, those aged over 55, will make up more than 30% of the UK’s workforce, according to Priorities for occupational safety and health research in Europe: 2013-2020, published in 2013 by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work.This is influenced by ...