Working for a healthier tomorrow

Following the 2007 consultation on the health of the working age population, National Director for Health and Work professor Dame Carol Black has published her recommendations to government.

The report, Working for a healthier tomorrow, sets out ten key challenges and recommendations for reform together with a number of other recommendations for implementing a programme to improve the health and wellbeing of the working age population. A number of these recommendations have significance for employers in the NHS. Our response to the consultation reflected employer views and we are pleased that a number of points from our response are reflected in Dame Carol's report.

In the NHS, where 70 per cent of costs are staff costs, a long-term strategic approach to developing a healthy workplace is needed to both safeguard the investment in staff and to provide improved service delivery for patients.

Employers' organisations such as ours, in collaboration with policymakers and staff side organisations, can help to unlock the potential for the workplace to be a source of education on things like exercise and healthy eating, as well as tackling common occupational ill health complaints such as stress and musculoskeletal problems.

Ensuring NHS staff are healthy will have a direct impact on a large proportion of the UK workforce. And, because the NHS workforce is at the heart of high quality patient care, this will also have an indirect affect on the health and wellbeing of the wider working age population.