Welcome to our Occupational Health Services FAQ!
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Occupational health is a specialist area of medicine focusing on the health of employees and staff in the workplace. Occupational Health (OH) is about how the work environment and the activities undertaken, influences or affects a person’s health and how someone’s health conditions or needs can impact on their ability to undertake their normal work activities.
OH professionals aim to find out the impact that work has on the employee’s health and wellbeing and make sure that staff are fit to undertake the role they are employed to do, both physically and emotionally.
OH also plays an important role in assessing employees who are on long-term sickness absence, when returning to work after a period of leave after experiencing a significant health concern or when struggling with health issues whilst working. The clinicians’ aim to assist in facilitating the individuals continued ability to work through adjustments if necessary and promote an effective return to work after absences. Assessing fitness to work regarding ill-health capability or ill-health retirement is also part of their role.
Helping employers fulfil their duties under the Equality Act 2010 (including disability, mental health, neurodiversity and age discrimination), is also an important aspect of OH work.
Occupational health is concerned with how work and the work environment can impact on an employee’s health, both physically and mentally, and how an employee’s health and wellbeing can affect their ability to do their job. Simply put, this means “the effect of work on health and that of health on work”.
In Health and Safety law, there are statutory duties that employers must do to make sure the employees’ health is not adversely affected by their work activities or environment and that employees are medically fit to carry out their work safely. This includes three main areas:
There are other things that you should do where workers have health conditions or disabilities, either work-related or not, to ensure you are complying with Equality legislation when supporting workers both in and returning to work.
Your employees are the most valuable aspect of your business and keeping them fit and healthy will result in a positive workforce with low sickness absence rates, fewer injuries, and improved production. Physical and mental health is important to the well-being of the individual and the overall culture of the business.
Advice on promoting healthy lifestyles might include specific campaigns that focus on either specific health concerns or work related health concerns.
Occupational health provides a full range of services dedicated to the health and wellbeing of employees in the workplace, which can include providing the statutory health surveillance services, developing solutions to keep staff with health issues at work, to assisting with the initial stages of ill health or providing independent advice on staff unable to work due to long-term or short-term intermittent health problems, with organisational advice to reduce sickness absence and promote regular attendance.
Employers have a statutory duty to provide occupational health surveillance if their employees are working with a known risk or hazard that can damage a persons health e.g.: Noise, Respiratory Sensitisers, power tools, chemicals and skin irritants, etc.
Employers are also required by Law to manage and prevent physical and mental ill health in your workers that may occur as a result of your business activities e.g manual handling, night working and lone working.
A Workplace Health Needs Assessment is a systematic review of the health and wellbeing issues facing your business. It will determine your company’s health needs and assist in identifying the type and level of resources and services required to meet those needs. The process looks at what is currently provided and may raise issues, highlight gaps in service provision, identify problem areas and also encourage the engagement of employees and management. The process enables the Occupational Health Provider to provide your business with a selection of options that can be part of your Occupational Health Service that assists you to meet your statutory requirements.
All health assessment referrals would normally be made through Human Resources, Health and Safety or by Manager referral, unless the company agrees to employee’s self-referring to Occupational Health.
The most common workplace health hazards can be divided into the following categories:
All the above can be monitored by an occupational health surveillance programme with employees and employers receiving reports with the results of their surveillance. Occupational health will work with Health and Safety, Human Resources and Managers to ensure that all relevant employees are covered by relevant health surveillance services and provide the business with the information required to protect and promote good health to their employees.
This includes pre-placement assessments by occupational health clinicians to advise on any need for adjustments on starting a new role, providing clinical and workplace assessments on referral by the employer and recommending suitable workplace adjustments where appropriate, to support compliance with employment and equality legislation.
The Equality Act 2010 ensures that employers take a person’s health needs into consideration when managing their sickness absence or health concerns to make sure that they are treated fairly in the workplace. once a clinician has seen the employee, it is likely that they will be able to determine whether a person falls within the scope of the Equality Act 2010, however, ultimately it is a legal decision.
Whilst there are some conditions that would definitely include an individual within the Equality Act, such as cancer, multiple sclerosis, HIV and long-term mental health conditions, broadly the employee will meet this criteria if they have a physical, mental or neurodiverse condition or impairment that has a ‘substantial’ and ‘long-term’, usually over one year, negative affect on their ability to do normal daily activities.
Adjustments can be helpful to ease an employee back into work and protect them from either exacerbating a condition or by assisting in their recovery, and can include returning on reduced hours, temporary redeployment to an easier or less demanding role, providing additional training, temporarily re-allocating some of their workloads, until they are fully functioning, providing closer parking if suffering from immobility, or home/hybrid working, depending on the nature of the job. Any adjustments need to be reasonable within the context of the business needs and capacity to make them.
In some instances, particularly in production area, it can be helpful to have a workplace assessment undertaken by one of our experienced occupational health nurses, in order to gain an in-depth insight into an individual’s workplace and the activities they undertake so that it can be viewed with the individuals health concerns in mind.
In this case, the nurse will visit your site and conduct a ‘walkabout’ with the supervisor or manager and the employee, to gain a fuller understanding of their role and any concerns that the manager or employee may have.
Unfortunately, poor health can result in a person’s inability to continue to work. It is important that alternative options have been considered prior to proceeding to ill health retirement.
Ill Health Retirement is a specific health assessment for eligibility for early payment of pension benefits on the grounds of permanent ill health, as determined by the regulations for the employers scheme.
Ill Health Retirement assessments are undertaken by Unity’s experienced doctors to ensure all reasonable options have been explored and that the individual is being fairly and appropriately managed.
If you would like to discuss the ill health retirement of one of your employees with a member of the Unity team, please call 01603 250015.
Our health is influenced by our work and social activities as well as our genetic make up and lifestyle. In some instances, there are definite relationships between the work environment and the effect it can have on an individual’s health such as exposure to isocyanates, fish protein and flour can cause work-related asthma, and repetitive movements can cause upper limb disorders, lifting heavy weights can cause back pain, and working with lead and asbestos, where it can enter the body, can cause long-term health problems.
Where there are known health risks, regular health surveillance can help identify concerns early and enable the management of any health conditions as they occur.
Some health effects only occur after a long period of time in a particular work environment, such as noise induced hearing loss or hand arm vibration syndrome, and therefore these should be regularly monitored by health questionnaires and occupational health assessments..
If you are concerned that the work environment is causing an employee a health problem, please contact the team at Unity for further information or advice.
SEQOHS accreditation provides assurance that the accredited occupational health provider:
You can check on the list of SEQOHS accredited OH services – www.seqohs.org
On the home page you can search for the type of service that you are looking for and where and how these services are delivered in your area.
If you have concerns about an employee or colleagues health, or are unsure of the most suitable occupational health services required for your company, contact the friendly team at Unity on 01603 250015, who will explain the best way forward. A workplace visit can be undertaken by our experienced nurses to assess the work environment and any potential hazards or concerns that an individual or manager may have.
If you are looking for information on what occupational health services could be provided in your workplace, or information about workplace hazards, we would suggest that you visit the HSE Website www.hse.gov.uk
