A busy Occupational Health Theatre was put straight on a few confusing aspects of the 2010 Equality Act by Cynthia Atwell OBE, a well-known occupational health nurse and consultant, and then treated to an analysis of what makes good work by Barry Wilkes, a NEBOSH development manager.
Cynthia kicked off the session by dispelling a few common myths around the Equality Act. The Act protects against discrimination on the grounds of age, disability, gender, sex and religion amongst others, but there is a lot of concern from employers about what pre-employment assessment in terms of disability and health actually means.
“Although you must not ask questions about a person’s health until a job offer is made, this does not mean you cannot undertake health assessments,” Cynthia said. “You can ask if a person has any special requirements in attending an interview and if there are any reasons they may not be able to carry out the job in hand, such as poor eyesight or hearing for a train driver for example, if these are relevant to the job.”
A job offer can be made that is conditional on medical grounds and questions about physical and mental health can be asked after a job offer is made. However, she stressed, these must be appropriate questions, taking into account the requirements of the job and assessing the person and what they are capable of doing as an individual, to avoid unlawful discrimination.
However, she stressed: “We mustn’t be afraid of some of these issues. It is not quite as bad as some people are thinking. Employers are not expected to make or find a special job for someone if they have a disability.”
Employers are required by law to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ for people with disabilities, such as moving people to a different floor of a premises, altering working hours, giving training, or allocating duties that they are not able to perform to someone else who can. Occupational health people should ask themselves: “is it reasonable and practical? Can I do that? But if you fail to make a reasonable adjustment you could be in trouble,” she warned.
On the question of health and safety, Cynthia made the very important point that although H&S law takes precedence over disability law, “it should not be used as an excuse to discriminate. It is rubbish to say – you can’t do such and such because it negates our insurance, or other excuses,” she said.
In part two of the session, Barry Wilkes took the reins to examine the pool of evidence that work is beneficial to health, both during the period of work and post retirement.
In 2006 the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) commissioned a report by Gordon Waddell and Kim Burton, Is Work Good for Your Health and Well-being? The research found that there is strong evidence that work is generally good for both physical and mental health and wellbeing. The reverse is true for those without work or the long-term sick. However, work can be therapeutic and can reverse poor physical and mental health. “Overall they found that the benefits of work outweigh the risks,” he said.
However, it has to be ‘good’ work. So what makes a good job? The Work Foundation found in 2008 that a good job encompasses:
Dame Carol Black’s report Working for a Healthier Tomorrow said much the same, he said. Barry stressed the point that: “a lot of what we are talking about is the responsibility of line managers. Having good managers is the best thing an employer can do to improve health at work. Good managers lead to health improvement.”
Barry recommended the manager competence indicator tool from the HSE, CIPD and IIP with which managers can measure themselves to tell how good they are at the stress management of their employees (see http://www.hse.gov.uk/stress/mcit.htm)
Finally, Barry cited research from the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health that found that if a person has a good ‘workability index’ score while in their job, their long term health outcomes post-retirement are better. A person’s relationship with their line manager is key.
“There are changes that the employer can make while you are employed that can increase your life expectancy. This is compelling evidence that having a good job brings long-term health benefits to the person, the community and to the country, in terms of reducing costs in the long term,” Barry concluded.
In this episode of the Safety & Health Podcast, ‘Burnout, stress and being human’, Heather Beach is joined by Stacy Thomson to discuss burnout, perfectionism and how to deal with burnout as an individual, as management and as an organisation.
We provide an insight on how to tackle burnout and why mental health is such a taboo subject, particularly in the workplace.
