Healthy Working Environment

Every year 187 million working days are lost because of ill health. This costs employers billions of pounds. Creating and maintaining a healthy workplace is an important aspect of running a business.

The links below provide advice from a variety of sources to help you create a healthy working environment:

Health and Safety Executive (HSE):

Work-Related Stress

Pressure is part and parcel of all work and helps to keep us motivated. But excessive pressure can lead to stress, which undermines performance, is costly to employers and can make people ill.

Alcohol and Drugs at Work

Drug, alcohol and other substance misuse is everyone's concern. It damages health, causes absenteeism and reduced productivity.

'Securing Health Together' is the government’s 10 year occupational health strategy which was launched in July 2000. It is a vision to tackle the high levels of work related ill-health and to reduce the personal suffering, family hardship and costs to individuals, employers and society.

Asbestos

Asbestos is the greatest single cause of work related deaths in the UK.

This information will be of particular interest to employers, asbestos contractors and others with duties under asbestos regulations, together with those workers currently at greatest risk from exposure to asbestos.

Occupational Skin Disease

An occupational skin disease is a disease wholly or partially due to a person’s occupation. It means workers have to come into contact with a hazardous agent(s). Work related dermatitis (sometimes called eczema) is one of the major occupational skin diseases.

Sun Protection

If you are an employer or manager responsible for people whose work keeps them outside for most of the day, this link gives advice on reducing the health risks for your employees when they are working in the sun.

BBC - Health:

Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI)

RSI is caused by repeated overuse and injury to the muscles of the hands, wrists, arms or shoulders.

Stress

Stress in itself isn't necessarily harmful. Everyone needs goals and challenges. But too much can be damaging. This link explains how to spot when stress is becoming unmanageable and suggests ways to deal with it.