Occupational Health Support
Healthy workers and a safe workplace have a direct influence on the productivity and profitability of your company. Fewer accidents and fewer days lost to sickness and injury means your team can spend more time getting on with what they do best.
However, a recent study by the Health and Safety Executive highlighted 6 specific areas within the workplace with the potential to cause stress and related conditions:
•The demands of the job
•Your control over your work
•Support from managers and colleagues
•Work relationships
•Your role within the organisation
•Change and how it is managed
Successfully managing these elements can have a huge impact on your employees – boosting motivation and increasing productivity. Conversely, failure to ensure that your employees’ concerns are properly addressed is the fastest route to low morale, low productivity and lost profit.
Many companies look to provide their people with free or low cost private medical care in order to ensure that should illness occur, they can be treated swiftly and effectively. However, any such provision is seen as a benefit-in-kind by the Inland Revenue, and as such is subject to taxation on the employee, and National Insurance contributions from the employer. Nonetheless under UK law employers have a duty of care to protect the health, safety and welfare of all employees whilst at work.
Of course there are ways that, as an employer, you can provide your team with invaluable health and safety benefits without incurring the wrath of the taxman!
In August 2000, “Employer-Provided Welfare Counselling” was made exempt from the benefit-in-kind ruling. It allows you to provide, either in-house or via a specialist third party, advice and counselling on a wide range of health-related issues; including stress, depression, marital and family matters, alcohol abuse, smoking cessation, and even back pain clinics. Whilst the exemption draws the line at the cost of medical treatment, it allows your employees to talk through these wide-ranging issues and seeks to minimise the impact of time taken off as a result of them. You can even offset the cost of such a provision against tax, so there’s a financial benefit too!
Should you feel that the provision of such a service would be a valuable exercise to your team, please follow this link to read details of our Employee Assistance Programme.
In the meantime, the Health and Safety Executive offer these three guidelines for successfully managing and minimising work-related stress:
•Assess the risk and potential causes of stress within your organisation
•Use these to assess how the organisation is performing in relation to the six risk factors. This includes managers talking to their teams to identify stress “hotspots”.
•Decide on improvement targets and action plans in consultation with staff and their representatives.
For advice and guidance on how you can maximise your profitability by following the Health and Safety Executive guidelines, or for details on In Balance’s Employee Assistance Programme, call us today on 01733 212312.
In Balance Ltd. 51 Beccelm Drive, Crowland, Peterborough, Lincs PE6 0AG
Registered Company Number: 544331..
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