Workplace stress is inevitably on the rise as staff fear for their careers, and struggle with ever expanding workloads caused by recruitment freezes and demanding performance expectations. The Health and Safety Executive reported in 2007 that more than 10 million working days per year are lost to the UK economy due to self-reported, work-related stress, depression or anxiety. With many workers reluctant to admit to mental health problems, no doubt due to concern over the impact on their careers, the real effect of unreported stress-related sickness absence is impossible to quantify. Overall sickness absence in general was estimated by the CBI to have caused a loss of 175 million working days in 2007, at a cost to the economy of £13 billion.
Recognising the need for action on sickness absence, the Government last year launched its Health, Work and Wellbeing initiative to ‘protect and improve the health and wellbeing of working age people'. Following a review led by Dame Carol Black, the Government agreed to press ahead with a range of eye-catching proposals, including replacing paper-based ‘sick notes' with electronic ‘fit notes' setting out the activities a GP believes an individual is able to do, rather than simply stating that they are unable to work.
The Government's proactive approach in this area is to be welcomed. In the same vein, employers have welcomed a recent announcement from HMRC that employer-provided annual health-screening and medical checks will be tax exempt from April 2009. This is helpful, but does not go far enough. Workplace health- screening and advice should be supported on an ongoing basis, rather than simply once a year.
Encouraging employers in this way to help their staff live healthy lives and make positive choices is a sensible and effective policy, and one that can be replicated easily elsewhere. Indeed, ‘bike to work' schemes are already working well and, supported by salary-sacrifice based tax exemptions, are now one of the fastest-growing employee benefits as staff recognise the value of doing more exercise and reducing reliance on their cars.
The logic of such schemes is clear, so why not look at using tax incentives to encourage other positive behaviour? For example, using the salary-sacrifice mechanism, employees could be motivated and rewarded for eating healthily, joining a gym, or reducing their carbon emissions. In addition, with employers recognising the impact of the ageing society, extending the tax exemptions for childcare vouchers to cover care services for adults would go a long way to helping staff who struggle to balance employment with caring for an elderly or sick relative. Initiatives such as these might have been more amenable to Government before the financial crisis began. However, Government should not allow urgent issues to crowd out important reforms.
While the current economic climate is bleak and the Government struggles to lessen the impact of the recession, social policy reform is in danger of falling by the wayside. Employers need the Government to think long term and plan beyond the recession. Issues such as obesity, work-related stress, climate change and the ageing society will still be with us after the economy has emerged from the current doldrums. Government must act now to provide support to businesses to adapt to these long-term trends and ensure that it is not so overawed by the complexity of the financial crisis that it fails to implement much-needed social reform.
Marc Woolfson, account director, Westminster Advisers
Woolfson on Westminster: Don't let staff wellbeing become a casualty of recession
UK unemployment is rising fast, with official figures currently standing at 1.923 million - the highest since September 1997. But it seems this may be just the tip of the iceberg, with nearly half of UK employees worried they may be made redundant before the end of the year. Although such catastrophic job losses are unlikely to be realised, HR bosses must be concerned about the effect of such a lack of confidence on productivity and workplace wellbeing.
