26 Jun Chief Health Advisors Warning – Make Workforces Happier and Healthier

Managers across England have been told to “raise their game” to create happy and healthy workplaces. Here at Annurca, this is a great passion of ours which we want to implement across every corporate venture through our wellbeing initiatives. It’s an encouraging sign for Annurca as it enables us to deliver our services within the workplace to help create a more positive environment, where the employees are happier, more motivated, meaning improved health and increasing the productivity for the businesses. Ultimately each business wants their staff to be working at optimum performance, to therefore produce the best outcome for the business.

This is our main goal and long term vision for the future within every project at Annurca, which has been recently supported by a report from the BBC. The report demonstrates some serious concern regarding employee health, classing it as a ‘lack of control’. The figures are clear cut, the need for Annurca’s wellbeing initiatives and programmes are at an all time high, and this is a very exciting prospect for us. The report states that England, Scotland and Wales, lost about 27 million working days to illnesses, including stress and back pain, in 2012-13. These figures cost society about £13bn a year. Annurca see this as a massive opportunity, and a necessity to help as many businesses as possible reduce these annual costs with our wellbeing programmes.

The National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is the vehicle behind this push on employee health, their guidelines have been made very clear to each business on how they should be treating their staff, designed to address this issue, which are intended for not only the employers, but managers and the employees. The documents from NICE suggest that managers of the business should take more responsibility to ensure that staff are appreciated for the work they do. Therefore allowing doors to open to be more creative and explore new possibilities. Hence why here at Annurca, we believe that the need for wellbeing initiatives within the work place would be the answer, and not only would the employees benefit, the employers would adopt a more productive workforce.

Prof Gillian Leng, NICE’s deputy chief executive, said: “Employers and managers need to recognise the value and benefits of a healthy workplace and what a difference it can make, not only to their employees, but to the productivity of their business. Each year more than a million working people in the UK experience a work-related illness. It is not only the physical hazards of work – long, irregular hours, lack of activity or repetitive injuries – that damage people’s health. Other factors such as a lack of control over work, conflicts, and discriminatory practices can also have an effect.” Responding to the guidelines, Simon Stevens, NHS England chief executive, said: “Health-promoting workplaces are obviously good for millions of employees and ultimately for taxpayers too, so the time is right for all employers – including the NHS – to raise our game.”