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Health for Work adviceline for small business

The Health for Work Adviceline is co-ordinated by NHS Plus and offers tailored occupational health (OH) advice and support to managers of businesses who are experiencing problems with employee physical or mental ill health. It aims to help organisations manage cases of employee ill health and sickness absence, and introduce healthier working practices that will positively impact on all staff. Investing in the health of employees and creating a healthy working culture makes sound commercial sense in terms of business performance, productivity and staff morale.

The impact of ill health on small businesses, in particular, is significant (some small businesses lose on average 12 days per employee each year to physical or mental ill health). Despite this, many SMEs do not provide help and support to staff who suffer from ill health because they are so focused on delivering business improvement and growth. The Health for Work Adviceline recognises this and so provides free, quick and easy access to effective professional advice and guidance to help managers:

  • find the advice and support they need to help an employee experiencing ill health;
  • develop a plan to effectively and sympathetically deal with employee sickness absence;
  • establish how to deal with similar problems in the future, should they occur;
  • think differently about their business and the investment they could make in a healthy workplace.

An enhanced Health for Work Adviceline service was launched on 1 November 2011 and offers a two-tier response for employers in micro, small, medium and large businesses, but with particular emphasis on organisations with fewer than 250 employees. Advice can be sought in three ways:

  • Telephone advice on freephone 0800 0 77 88 44
  • Self-service information through access to an extensive, intelligent, on-line knowledge base (www.health4work.nhs.uk)
  • On-line communication with a contact centre by submitting a question to the support team, or ‘chatting’ directly with a member of the team (a form of instant messaging)

For more information on the Health for Work Adviceline, visit www.health4work.nhs.uk