Increasing evidence supports the need for workplace wellness programmes and many organisations are seen implementing health programmes in line with the government-led initiative to improve the health and well-being of working age people.

A recent study conducted by the Work Foundation led a partnership with RAND Europe and Aston Business School revealed that the health workplace interventions are useful to mitigate health risk factors and reduce the work-related cost associated with poor health and well-being in British workplaces and the NHS in England.

Health and well-being remain key issues in British workplaces

Evidence shows that health and well-being at work remain key priority. For instance, work-related illness due to stress, anxiety and depression are on the rise.

In Great Britain, during 2007/08 an estimated 2.1 million people suffer from an illness that they believed was caused or made worse by their current or past work; 229 workers suffered fatal injuries at work; and 299,000 self-reported injuries occurred. As a result, 34 million working days were lost overall (1.4 days per worker), 28 million due to work-related ill-health and six million due to workplace injury.

Poor health and well-being at work lead to significant individual, organisational, economic and societal consequences due to sickness absence.

Not only does the individual suffer from poor health and well-being issues at work, it  can also be damaging to their immediate family, and eventually to the community and society they live in.

The Health and Safety Executive estimates the cost to individuals of workplace accidents and work related ill-health to be between £10.1 and £14.7 billion in Great Britain. These cost include loss of income, extra expenditure of dealing with injury or ill-health, and subjective cost of pain, grief and suffering.

The consequences of poor health and well-being at work are costly to employers in terms of number of days lost and their associated cost to employers themselves. The Health and Safety Executive estimates the costs to employers of workplace accidents and work-related ill-health to be between £3.9 and £7.8 billion in Great Britain. These cost include sick pay, administrative cost, damage from injuries and non-injuries, recruitment cost and compensation and insurance cost.

The report showed that an estimated 27.6 million working days were lost in 2007/08 in Great Britain due to work-related illness. This represents 1.15 days lost on average per worker. Besides this, there are estimates that work-related injuries were responsible for 6.2 million days lost during the same year, representing 0.22 days lost on average by each worker.

In the civil service in the country, an averages of 9.3 working days were lost per staff year to sickness absence in the financial year 2006/07.  In addition to the individual and organisational consequences of health and wellbeingissues at work, there are non-negligible consequences for society as a whole. The Healthand Safety Executive estimates the costs to society of workplace accidents and work-related ill-health to be between £20.0 and £31.8 billion in Great Britain. These costs comprise loss of output, medical costs, costs to the Department for Work and Pensions of administeringbenefit payments, and Health and Safety Executive and local authority investigation costs.

NHS England faces challenge with Workplace health and well-being

The proportion of workers reporting an illness or an injury varies across sectors, jobs and organisations. The report indicated that working in human health activities (hospital, medical practice, dental practice and other human health activities) or in the NHS, as opposed to other activities and organisations, increases the odds of reporting a work-related illness or an injury.

Moreover, NHS workers report more work-related illnesses due to stress, anxiety and depression than other workers in England.The NHS in England shows a comparatively high average of working days lost per staff per year, i.e. 10.7 compared to the average of 9.3 in the public sector. Moreover, NHS workers seem to stay on sick leave longer than other workers.
Workplace health interventions can be effective to address poor health and well-being

The concept of health and well-being at work goes beyond the mere absence of illness or disability. It should be understood as a “state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing” (World Health Organization, 1948).

Various antecedent factors are related to the health and wellbeing of workers: work-related, lifestyle and socio-economic factors. Workplace health interventions aiming at improving health and wellbeing at work should therefore not focus only on work-related factors.

Evidence from the literature and the selected case studies show that many workplace health interventions targeting problems due to work-related antecedent factors such as low back pain, musculoskeletal disorders and mental health disorders can have positive health outcomes.

The study also suggests that interventions aimed at improving damaging lifestyle behaviours such as poor diet, smoking, alcohol abuse and lack of physical activity can be effective in terms of health outcomes. Nevertheless, few studies directly relate Health and Wellbeing at Work in the United Kingdom workplace interventions to work-related outcomes, and the economic effectiveness of interventions varies greatly across sectors.

The source: RAND Corporation

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