Getting the most out of your occupational health provider

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Occupational health providers are transforming their services to support emerging health risks and utilise digital service delivery. Employers that work with them to co-create solutions and assess the business impacts stand to gain the most benefits, writes Louise Abbs.
The pandemic has fundamentally changed the way that occupational health is delivered, with long-term plans having to give way to supporting employees with immediate priorities; be that the need to deliver services remotely due to homeworking, or put in place new solutions for emerging issues such as long Covid.
The result has been a couple of years of immense creativity and innovation, with new digital services and apps being delivered. This has made occupational health services more accessible than ever, leading to a far more agile and responsive way of working with employers to meet emerging needs.
In many cases, employers helped to co-create these new services, by sharing pulse survey data about how employees’ concerns were progressing. From rising anxiety and bereavement levels to increasing musculoskeletal issues as more people started working from home and NHS operations got cancelled, as well as rising levels of fatigue and burnout.
The result has been a fundamental shift from the perception of occupational health as a sickness absence management tool, to a professional service with the insights and expertise needed to help people stay healthy and productive. Fortunately, that desire to flex and adapt solutions to employees’ needs has remained in place.