This is a sponsored article by Health Clinic 2 You.
Protecting the health and safety of employees has been a basic duty of employers for a long time, but modern employers are expected to go one stage further and prioritise the health and wellbeing of their workforce. This is primarily because people are the biggest asset of a business and they need to be looked after, but also because there are numerous business reasons to do so for the employer.
The biggest impact of poor health and wellbeing amongst the employees of a business is absenteeism and reduced productivity, which can be extremely damaging, particularly to a small-to-medium enterprise (SME). Like any improvement project in a business, there is a right and a wrong way of prioritising employee health and wellbeing, and an increasingly popular way of getting this right is to take a tailored approach which recognises the unique needs of individual employees, and a great example of that is employee health checks.
What are employee health checks?
Employee health checks are a programme of on-site consultations whereby individual employees are granted time off work to meet and speak with healthcare professionals and undergo a bespoke programme of health checks and blood testing. These could include diabetes testing, vitamin D testing, kidney and liver function testing, cholesterol testing and thyroid testing.
They are designed to identify any existing health conditions and provide early insight into potential health issues in the future. Results are almost instant and provide the employee with critical information on their current health whilst also helping the employer manage workplace wellbeing by taking into account the health impacts of relevant findings.
The absence and productivity problem for SMEs
It was reported in a Deloitte health study in 2022 that presenteeism costs UK businesses around £29 billion annually. This is the cost of employees turning up to work but not being well enough to perform their jobs properly. There could be many reasons why an employee might feel compelled to do this, but essentially this highlights the huge cost of health impacts on productivity, and can be added to the cost of absenteeism, which is people being absent from work due to ill health and is what most people would consider to be the primary cost to an SME.
Absence and poor productivity are a cost to the business in terms of:
- Output – Work not completed, lost business and missed deadlines.
- Efficiency – The costs of replacing people who are absent and getting them up-to-speed, which can include overtime, temporary workers and associated recruitment and training costs.
- Management – Admin costs of covering absences and managing cover.
- Morale – Absenteeism adds pressure on other people and leads to resentment, bitterness, burnout and possibly higher staff turnover.
- Inefficiency – Employees not working to their full potential can produce less, produce to poor standards and can create errors. This also adds to waste costs.
Using employee health checks to improve absenteeism and productivity
Introducing employee health checks is a proactive approach to managing employee health and wellbeing. It helps to ingrain a positive company culture and shows employees that their individual needs are being responded to.
There are various health and wellbeing initiatives that an employer can take, such as guest speakers and healthy eating programmes, in an attempt to educate employees on health and wellbeing, but workplace health checks on an individual basis are more valuable to the actual employee and the business generally.
The benefits of employee health checks on absenteeism and productivity include:
- Motivation – Employees feel engaged and empowered by the business prioritising their health and wellbeing, leading to more job satisfaction, loyalty and commitment, but also health benefits for the employee both inside and outside of work.
- Faster intervention – Identifying health concerns early can lead to immediate steps being taken to prevent serious issues developing.
- Performance – Employee health checks can identify underlying health issues which may be affecting an employee’s performance. This could include someone having a low vitamin D level, for example, which shows no obvious symptoms, but can result in low moods, loss of focus and low energy levels, which can affect motivation, work quality and productivity. Health checks can also identify musculoskeletal conditions which can result in workstations being redesigned or a job role being amended. This can help the employee’s long-term health and is to the benefit of the business also.
- Stress and anxiety – Identifying these issues and reflecting findings in changes to someone’s role can contribute to better mental health. It reduces worry and concerns about a position and improves workplace relationships by reducing conflict.
- Data – The results from a programme of employee health checks can be studied and analysed to establish if any damaging trends are occurring, such as a pattern of muscle strains in a physical task, or low vitamin D levels for employees always working indoors. The employer can take steps to address these trends based on these findings, even if an individual hasn’t reported a particular concern.
Workplace health checks can help to initiate change and to introduce improvement actions based on data and findings. This could be individual lifestyle changes such as healthy eating, or workplace changes in terms of amending a job profile, managing stress or preventing illness.
In general, a programme of employee health checks empowers both the employee and the employer with knowledge which helps to shape decisions, manage change and take control. Ultimately this will all help to promote better physical and mental health in the workforce, reduce absenteeism and improve the productivity and profitability position of the business.