Keeping people in work is a leadership issue, not a health issue

I said this to People Management, the CIPD magazine, for its piece today on plans for Britain’s first workplace health system.

And I mean it. Hundreds of thousand’s of people leave work because of ill health every year. The estimated cost of working-age ill health is in the billions.

Yes we can talk about occupational health, policies, reasonable adjustments and return to work processes. But underneath all of that is something as important and that is for leaders to hold their organisation and their people.

In doing so did they even notice? Did they ask the difficult question early enough?

Did the person feel able to say I am struggling before struggling became absence, and absence became leaving?

And when they did say it, did their manager actually know what to do next through rigorous process and by being relationally human.

The proposed system includes earlier conversations, quicker adjustments and plans to help people stay in work rather than waiting until they have already fallen out of it.

Prevention rarely starts with a policy.  It starts with a conversation.  And very often, it’s one of the difficult ones.

Thanks to People Management magazine for including my perspective in the piece.

Read the People Management article

Image: People Management