Since Dame Carol Black’s review of the health and wellbeing of the UK’s working population, the British government has implemented exciting initiatives that act on the report’s key findings.

In their response to "Working for a healthier tomorrow", the Government has shown an appreciation of the human and social costs of poor workforce health alongside the economic costs.

The initiatives are aimed at satisfying three key aspirations:

• Creating new perspectives on health and work;
• Improving work and workplaces; and
• Supporting people to work.

What do the UK initiatives tell us about what we could be doing to improve here:

• Occupational Health helpline for small businesses. This phone hotline provides “small business owners and managers with early and easy access to high quality professional advice, tailored to their needs, and in response to individual employee health issues at work, including mental health issues.”

At the launch of the Australasian Faculty of Occupational and Environmental Physicians “Realising the health benefits of work” position statement in Sydney last week, Sir Mansel Aylward remarked that small to medium sized businesses have the most trouble dealing with workers’ compensation and return to work. They are more likely to become frustrated or angry and are more likely to “let employees go” for fear of cost. A hotline for small businesses to easily access information should greatly improve their ability to deal well with the situation.

• ‘Fit notes’. This initiative turns the prohibitive, old-world ‘sick note’ into a positive recommendation for an injured worker’s rehabilitation. The fit note outlines tasks an injured worker can do, so that they may return to work sooner. The trouble with the sick note system we still use in Australia is that it reinforces a person’s disability and doesn’t focus on their return to working life. We examine the Fit-Note concept further in this RTWMatters article.

• A National Education program for GPs. One of the concerns in the treatment of injured or ill workers the world over is that doctors (along with workers and employers) don’t fully understand the importance of return to work as a critical step in the rehabilitation of their patients. This program will raise GPs awareness in the UK and provide strategies, skills and confidence in encouraging their patients to return to work.

• Health, Work and Wellbeing Coordinators. Again aimed at small business, these regionally based co-ordinators will help to, “facilitate an integrated approach to health and employment at a local level.” As a form of PR and public education for business, the coordinators will raise awareness of the benefits of good work to good health (and vice versa), and promote best practice and innovation on health, employment and skills.

In Australia as well as the UK, many businesses still don’t understand the proven economic and human cases for workplace health and wellbeing programs. Businesses can't be expected to act unless they know how they, and their employees will benefit.

• Mental health and employment strategy. Carol Black estimates the costs of illness to the British economy at £100 billion a year, with mental ill-health accounting for between £30 and £40 billion of that. The mental health and employment strategy aims to return and keep at work people suffering from mental health illnesses, while tackling misperceptions about the employability of workers suffering from mental health illnesses.

According to Mindframe statistics, mental disorders are the third leading cause of disability burden in Australia with one in five adult Australians experiencing a mental illness at some stage of their lives. There should be no greater impetus for mental health rehabilitation and employment focus right now in Australia.

There are many other interesting initiatives being rolled out in the UK:

• Business health-check tool;
• Further NHS Plus development;
• A Workplace Health and Wellbeing Challenge Fund;
• A review of the health and well-being of the NHS workforce;
• A National Centre for Working-Age Health and Wellbeing;
• A pilot of Early intervention services; and
• Changes to “Access to Work."

The Working for Health website details all of these new initiatives, and how they have arisen from the Black report.

What would you like to see happen Australia? Is the Australasian Faculty of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (AFOEM) on the right track with their new position statement, Realising the Health Benefits of Work? What initatives should we be pushing for in Australia?

The UK has shown that change is possible. We're now in the position of being able to watch, learn, and build momentum for change in our own country.

Where do you think change is most needed?