Employers not convinced by business case for investing in benefits

Corporate advisers have much more to do to convince employers of the business case for investing in health and wellbeing, suggests new research from the Department for Work and Pensions.

Only a slim majority (56%) of the 2,250 employers surveyed agreed that the financial benefits of investing in employee health and wellbeing outweighed the costs, while half thought that their employees would not want them to intervene in this area.

Two-thirds had not taken any actions to help employees with health problems to stay in work or return to work. Just a quarter agreed that sickness absence was a barrier to productivity and 21% did not have a system in place for recording sickness absence.

Employers listed "improving employee health and well-being" second to last when asked to rate the importance of various priorities, focusing instead on existing core activities and brand strength and training employees. The researchers warned that this makes health and wellbeing "vulnerable in times of economic hardship."

In a separate survey of 2,965 working age adults, researchers commissioned by the Department found that most agreed that work was good for physical and mental health and that 60% would go into work with a long-term physical or mental health condition. However, 45% said that their employers should have no say or "not very much say" in determining the length of time for which absent employees were signed off by their GP. Although more than 80% said they would ask their current employer to take steps so that they could carry on working if diagnosed with a long-term condition, only 38% said they had access to occupational health services.

The Department has also published a survey of 1,405 GPs, which found that 61% agreed that the Fit Note - the form which has replaced the traditional sick note and is designed to help GPs focus on what patients can do, rather than cannot do, at work - had improved the quality of their discussion with patients about returning to work. Almost half (48%) said it had increased how often they recommended a return to work. However, 77% said they felt obliged to give sickness certificates for reasons that were not strictly medical and just 20% said there were good services locally to which they could refer patients for advice about returning to work.