The benefits of Occupational Health
Occupational health is a distinct branch of medicine concerned with how a worker's health can affect his or her ability to do the job and how work and the work environment can affect an employee's health.
The World Health Organisation defines the purpose of an occupational health service as being "… to promote and maintain the physical, mental and social wellbeing of all staff".
Leaner company profiles mean that there are now fewer employees in organisations – which makes it crucial that employees are not incapacitated or lost through preventable ill health.
Using a professional occupational health service such as Working Health Solutions, can help our clients:
- Reduce the cost of staff absence and sickness
- Give management a professional and consistent approach to managing sickness and absence
- Boost staff morale through effective management of unnecessary absence
- Improve employees' health, reducing staff turnover by improving retention
- Ensure compliance with Disability and Health and Safety legislation reducing the risk of costly prosecution and loss of image
- Reduce employee compensation claims for work related illness and injury, whether or not a particular hazard is covered by legislation. Noise-induced deafness, back pain, upper limb disorders and stress are good examples. These losses are preventable.
- Reduce employers' liability premiums. Insurers insist that employers demonstrate that they are adequately protecting the health of their employees. Last year employers liability insurance premium increases ranged from 10% to 150%
- Help alleviate and manage stress at work
- Achieve significant return on investment - Employee absence is a significant cost to 90% of businesses according to research from the CIPD. Their latest employee absence survey reveals that on average sickness absence costs employers £666 per employee every year and employee absence costs employers 8 working days for every member of staff per year; this represents 3.5% of working time