Managing Long-Term Illness and Occupational Health Issues
Posted on 30th March 2023 at 15:22
Occupational health and long-term sickness are significant challenges for businesses, particularly with the fast-paced demands and pressures of today’s work environments. In any workplace, employees are the backbone of the organisation, and their health and well-being are essential for the success of the business. However, despite best efforts to maintain a safe and healthy work environment, employees can still suffer from long-term sickness and occupational health issues. This can pose significant challenges for businesses, which must find ways to cope and support their employees during these difficult times. In this month’s blog, we explore some strategies that businesses may find useful:
1. Implementing an Occupational Health Program
An occupational health program is designed to promote the physical and mental well-being of employees in the workplace. Such a program could involve regular health checks, health and safety training, and advice and support on a range of health-related issues. Having an occupational health program can help businesses identify and manage risks to employee health and support them to work safely and sustainably. This could include hiring an in-house or outsourced occupational therapist either full-time or part-time to support employees.
Prevention is always better than cure, and businesses are obliged to take steps to identify potential occupational health hazards in the workplace and take appropriate measures to mitigate them. This may include providing ergonomic workstations, offering regular breaks, or implementing stress-reduction measures such as counselling, regular training or a scheme of perks designed to improve an employee’s overall work experience.
2. Offering Flexible Work Arrangements
Flexible working arrangements can help employees manage their health conditions and reduce the risk of sickness absence. These arrangements could involve part-time working, job sharing, working from home, or flexible hours. By offering these options, businesses can support employees to work in a way that suits their health needs, which can help reduce stress and anxiety levels. This could encourage employees who are suffering with long-term illness to return to work in some capacity, who otherwise might not be able to cope with the pressures of full-time work outside the home.
3. Be clear about Absence Management
When dealing with long-term illness, it is essential for businesses to have a clear absence management policy in place and to make sure that the policy is followed in all cases. This should be outlined to employees as part of their onboarding process when they enter a business, so both employees and managers are clear on what happens around absences before the fact.
The policy should outline how the business will manage an employee's absence, including how to monitor and record absences, and the steps the business will take to manage absences that exceed a certain duration. This policy should also include a clear communication plan to keep employees informed of their absence management process. You can get in touch with us today for a template Absence Management Policy and we can offer you guidance on how best to implement it in your business.
4. Think about offering certain employee benefits
Businesses could consider introducing certain benefits, such as income protection insurance or private medical insurance, to support employees who are unable to work due to illness or injury. This can help alleviate some of the financial burdens that employees may face during their absence and provide them with peace of mind. Employees who feel well supported through sickness absence are much more motivated to return to work and are more likely to feel a sense of company loyalty, which in turn helps keep employee retention rates high.
If you are dealing with a particular sickness absence case or looking for some general support, get in touch. We can support you with implementing a business-wide absence management policy and/or offer tailored support with individual cases which might be particularly challenging.
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