Managing occupational health and wellbeing – Time to make it a priority!

System Concepts is proud to announce it has recently added another course to its portfolio of IOSH training courses. IOSH Managing Occupational Health and Wellbeing now sits alongside the well-established Leading, Managing and Working Safely Courses that we have delivered for a number of years.

The Managing Occupational Health and Wellbeing course is a little different to some of the other IOSH courses as it focusses solely on employee Health and Wellbeing (as the name suggests). Delivered over a single day the course is split into four modules:

• A healthy company – which reinforces the importance of health management and health needs within an organisation.
• Health risk management – which details types of health hazards and how to assess and control these.
• Fitness for work – which looks at types of personal or health conditions that affect fitness for work and how to assess and manage these.
• Wellbeing –which gives delegates an understanding of what wellbeing is and looks at how stress can impact this.

Management Today and the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) examined the role line managers play in promoting positive mental health in the workplace. Their results showed that line managers have a fundamental role to play in the promotion of positive mental health in the workplace and the impact they can have on their direct reports is significant. Not only this but the survey identified that more needs to be done from the top to proactively manage health and wellbeing.

This course fills that knowledge gap perfectly by equipping managers with the knowledge they need to identify if staff may be at a risk of physical health issues in the workplace (e.g. noise, dust etc.) and also to identify when they may need support with their mental health.

Whilst traditional work related safety issues continue to be better managed over time, work related stress, depression and anxiety cases continue to rise, as can be seen from the HSE’s statistics showing 914,000 workers suffering from these issues in 2021/22 resulting in 17 million working days lost.

Businesses spend large amounts of resources on mental health first aiders and employee assistance programs but these items can be “plasters” to the underlying issues, real business benefit can be gained from equipping managers with the tools they need to manage their reportees’ work related health and wellbeing, keeping them productive, happy and in work!