What is Occupational Health – Occupational Health is…
Safewell’s Occupational Health services will help keep your employees healthy and safe whilst in work and manage any risks in the workplace that are likely to give rise to work-related ill health. Be that either physically or mentally.
Your staff are a key business asset and essential to productivity and profitability.
Research shows that good health is good for business and better workplaces have better financial results. Every year over 170 million days are lost to sickness absence. The Government’s Black Review of the health of the working age population reported the cost to the economy is estimated to be £100bn each year. Research shows that the longer people are off sick, the less likely they are to make a successful return to work. After six months absence from work, there is only a 50 per cent chance of someone making a successful return.
Occupational health is a specialist branch of medicine that focuses on the physical and mental wellbeing of employees in the workplace. The aim of occupational health is to prevent work-related illness and injury by:
• encouraging safe working practices. • ergonomics (studying how you work and how you could work better). • monitoring the health of the workforce. • supporting the management of sickness absence.
An occupational health service might also:
• work with your employer to implement policies and ensure health and safety compliance; • conduct pre-employment health assessments; • support health promotion and education programmes; • provide advice and counselling to employees around non-health-related problems; • provide your employer with advice and guidance around making reasonable adjustments to your working conditions.
We have worked with Safewell for many years and are retained clients, so we have developed an excellent working relationship with the team. However, this really came into its own when Covid 19 appeared.
As a Plumbing and Heating business, we were able to carry on working during the lockdown but only for responding to emergencies. We were obviously very concerned about the health and safety of our employees and before we even had chance to get in touch with Safewell, they had emailed us offering their assistance. It is hard to put down on paper how that made us feel - we like everyone else felt totally at sea, which way to turn, what to do? But Safewell were there guiding, supporting and being totally brilliant. Their attention to detail is very impressive and reassuring and we feel able to ask lots of questions without feeling silly.
During the pandemic Safewell helped us to write risk assessments, safety procedures and protocols. They kept in touch regularly, issuing new guidance as soon as it appeared and checking in with us. They held group Q&A sessions over Zoom which were helpful, and knowing other businesses were facing the same challenges and having the opportunity to discuss issues was invaluable. Their help during the preparation for a full return to work was brilliant, they enabled us to be fully prepared and feel in control, and when we had our first case of Covid within the team, because we had planned our response it felt ok.
I think our team felt very reassured by our robust approach and that our office was Covid secure. We are extremely grateful to all the team at Safewell
