Balancing compliance with commitment

In the face of increasing legislation, new government initiatives, and business operational targets, a co-ordinated approach to occupational health has never been more important to assure cost-effective compliance and deliver a duty of care.

Occupational Health support has become a need to have,
rather than a nice to have

The simple fact is that an occupational health support has become a need to have for any organisation with staff.

There are an abundance of areas around which organisations may need to be sensitive and have access to professional advice:

• Managing sickness absence
• Compliance with Health & Safety regulations and obligations 
• The Equality Act, and the requirement for ‘reasonable adjustments’
• Requiring staff to undertake foreign travel
• Perceived stress in the workplace and stress management
• Drug and alcohol testing and policy development

The list goes on...

Absentee management — when Occupational Health pays for itself

Good Occupational Health support can save you money lost to absenteeism. Research from the CIPD suggests that on average sickness absence costs employers £692 per employee every year with 7.4 working days lost per employee per year. This represents 3.3% of working time.

Absence can be on account of multiple short-term sickness absence, long-term sickness absence, poor performance and behavioural issues can also result in reduced productivity and efficiencies within the business.

• Sound policies and procedures in place for the recording and management of sickness absence
• That contact is maintained with absent employees
• That professional Occupational Health advice is sought in respect of offering employee support, managing absence and assissting and advising on return to work strategies
• Return to work interviews and debriefs are conducted
• Ongoing review and/or support is made available if necesscary

Reducing absenteeism saves money. That is why more businesses are choosing to work closely with a specialist occupational health partner to reduce absence and help manage it when it occurs.

Maitland Medical is one of the UK’s leading OH providers. From the outset we can reduce your potential exposure to the costs of absenteeism using committed professionals to deliver a full range occupational health services.
 

Our long-term objective? To reduce your absence costs by over 16% per year.

Whilst some services deliver an immediate benefit, occupational health ensures the business is protected in terms of compliance, helps reduce absence and promote presenteeism and aims to develop a culture of wellbeing throughout the organisation.

Our long-term ambition is to reduce absenteeism by 1% every month, month on month, for the first year. This may not sound a lot but it means that at the end of 12 months the business will enter its second year of the programme with an absentee ‘run-rate’ 16% lower than when it started. We often deliver a better monthly reduction, but firmly believe that working closely with you our best practice occupational health policy genuinely can deliver a 1% month-on-month saving.

The following figures may be of interest:

1. A 10% annual run-rate reduction needs a saving of only .68% per month
2. A 12 % annual run-rate reduction needs a saving of only .89% per month
3. A 1% per month saving equals an annual run-rate reduction of 16.8%

Absenteeism is often a state of mind

Some businesses seem inherently more healthy than others. Generally the healthy ones are those that have developed an internal culture of good HR practice supoorted with occupational health. Absenteeism within a business is often a state of mind. Maitland Medical works with businesses to change that mindset, looking after staff and the business bottom line at the same time.