Employers should be fined if they create unhealthy workplaces, as part of Wes Streeting’s plan to get unemployed people fit to work, according to a leading thinktank.
The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) said employers that fail to provide a healthier work environment for their staff, such as subsidised nutritious food, should face regulatory action, including fines and public censure.
The proposal comes after the health secretary announced that weight loss jabs, such as Ozempic, could be given to unemployed people to help them get back into work. Streeting added that this would also ease demands on the NHS caused by obesity.
But Chris Thomas, head of the IPPR’s Commission on Health and Prosperity, said that it would not be effective to send people back to work after medical treatment into a workplace that was detrimental to their health.
He said that employers and the government should agree standards for good health in the workplace, with firms then taking responsibility for monitoring their compliance with those objectives.
Employers that failed to take reasonable steps to mitigate any harm to employees’ health, which Thomas described as a “do no harm duty”, should face regulatory action by the Health and Safety Executive.
For example, the regulator could take action against large firms where there were “unacceptable rates of people leaving the workforce” because of poor health.
Thomas said the role of the HSE should be expanded to deal with poor health caused by work, including obesity, anxiety and depression, in the same way as workplace accidents, such as falling off a ladder.
He said the approach would be similar to the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) consumer duty that requires financial services to avoid causing foreseeable harm to their customers, with those that failed to do so facing fines or public censure.
“One of the big factors we find in whether a workplace is conducive or detrimental to someone’s weight and their nutrition is access directly to healthy food,” said Thomas, co-author of a recent IPPR report on obesity and the labour market.
“There are still some workplaces that are pretty good at providing subsidised nutritious food, but not the vast majority. If you work in a very high-pressured office environment, are you going to be able to take the time to prepare your food, to eat lunch properly? Working on a shift pattern, are you going to be more reliant on takeaways open at four o’clock in the morning when you’re travelling home?
“If we send people back after medical intervention to an environment that made them sick in the first place, then we’re not doing the most effective thing.”
Thomas added that smaller firms should be offered financial incentives to help improve their employees’ health. He pointed to a programme run by the West Midlands combined authority, made up of 18 local councils, where some small and medium-sized businesses were given funding to improve employee health and wellbeing, as a possible model.
Sir Norman Lamb, the former Liberal Democrat MP and health minister, who chaired a mental health action plan that preceded the West Midlands programme, suggested that if the government did raise employer national insurance contributions, this could be waived for those companies that improved workplace health and wellbeing.
“Or you impose a levy on employers that you don’t have to pay if you engage in evidence-based approaches to keeping your employees healthy,” Lamb added. “So you incentivise employers to behave well.”
Joanna Hofman, deputy director employment, skills and equality at RAND Europe, which evaluated the West Midlands programme, said companies that received financial incentives – of £100 or £200 per employee – did more to improve the health and wellbeing of employees than firms which received no additional funding.
But she noted that this did not necessarily lead to employees adopting healthier lifestyles. “We didn’t find changes in self-reported health and wellbeing behaviours among the staff. Employers might provide facilities or services to improve physical activity or advice about nutrition, but whether and how that’s going to be taken up by their employees is not entirely within their control.”
