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Safety and Health Practitioner (SHP) is first for independent health and safety news.
July 23, 2008

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Drastic change needed to improve worker well-being

The National Social Marketing Centre is calling for a radical approach to improve employee health and well-being, with greater focus on worker feedback.

Urging the Government to take a more active role in improving the health and well-being of Britain’s workforce, the report argues that good employee health and well-being is good for business, and that there is both an economic incentive and a moral imperative for employers to take care of their workers’ health.

The report suggests that interventions to promote health and well-being at work should be driven by what workers say will help them perform better, and be safer and healthier. It also proposes that the current ‘cottage industry’ approach to tackling problems of health and well-being should be replaced by one that reflects the scale of benefits that could be accrued by the UK economy if good practice was more widely adopted.

The Centre accepts that initiatives such as subsidised memberships at local gyms, on-site massage, and private medical insurance have their part to play, but warns that the mental health of employees is often overlooked. It cites figures from charity Depression Alliance, which claim that depression accounts for 20 per cent of all days off sick.

NSMC director, Professor Jeff French, said: “What our review has demonstrated is that if organisations put effort into listening to their workers’ views about health and well-being this can have a big impact — not only on the health of the workforce but also on the company’s bottom line and efficiency.

“We need to bring these two agendas, which have been pursued separately, together.”

To download a copy of the report, click on the link below.

http://www.nsms.org.uk/public/default.aspx?PageID=5

What makes us susceptible to burnout?

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.

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