Health is wealth
Our Health and Wellbeing Index helps improve your understanding of the costs of ill-health and poor wellbeing to your business.
Jasmin CollierEditorial Content Manager, RSSB
A key priority underpinning the operation of the GB rail network is the health and safety of our passengers. But we can’t achieve that effectively unless we look after the health and wellbeing of our staff as well.
According to our most recent Health and Wellbeing Performance Indicators Report, rail’s average time lost to illness is 5%. This is almost 3% higher than the national average. And in the March issue of Horizon magazine, Andy Mellors—Managing Director at Avanti West Coast—discussed some of the difficulties that rail employees face. He talked about stress, assault, and other mental wellbeing challenges, and that’s not to mention things like fatigue and musculoskeletal disorders.
However, the reality is that—despite the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 making it mandatory for organisations to manage their employees’ occupational health and safety—the health half is often overlooked.
Our Health and Wellbeing Index (H&WI) can help tackle the health dimension.
In a nutshell, the H&WI was designed to provide a single composite measure of workforce health and wellbeing by weighting all contributory components. Developed in partnership with health economists, the easy-to-use tool helps organisations make better health-based investment decisions in the context of multiple business considerations, like competing calls on budget.
The H&WI helps you generate an idea of your company’s health status by allowing you to input your reported health and wellbeing cases, which are weighted, to provide a single value. It’s this figure that can help inform your investment decisions. For example, you might decide to incorporate it into a cost-benefit analysis to help you determine what ill-health mitigation measures might be beneficial and easy to implement.
Its usefulness goes beyond decision making. The H&WI also allows you to measure your progress over time and see if your health and wellbeing strategies are working. It also allows you to compare your performance in this area with that of other businesses or parts of your own organisation.
While all of these are important metrics, the H&WI can also show you the estimated impact of employee ill-health on their quality of life. After all, a healthy worker is a productive and reliable worker.
The HW&I combines a number of metrics based on established health economics valuations, turning them into comparable units and costs. The tool then compares these with estimates of the value society attaches to the cost of preventing a fatality.
It’s also flexible to suit your needs. If you don’t need a comprehensive collection of health metrics, you can just use those that are relevant to your organisation. Tailoring your inputs will provide the most efficient view of how well you’re managing your organisation’s health.
If you’re familiar with the Fatalities and Weighted Injuries measure, you can use that in conjunction with the H&WI to compare your performances in both health and safety. Having that full view of your company’s health and safety, and understanding where you can improve, is crucial for the wellbeing of your workforce and the success of your business.
Boardroom attention on the H&WI can ensure that investments and initiatives in this area are given the attention they deserve.
Want to learn more?
For more resources on improving the health and wellbeing of your workforce, head to our website.
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