How Employers Can Help Their Staff Stay In Work | Letters

The Keep Britain Working reappraisal highlights nan situation of group leaving nan labour marketplace because of mediocre wellness (Fixing Britain’s worklessness situation will costs employers £6bn a year, study says, 5 November). Its telephone for employers to amended occupational wellness support and early involution is welcome, but it risks missing nan bigger issue: activity itself.

For excessively long, nan UK has subsidised mediocre work. Public authorities person awarded contracts to employers that salary debased wages, connection insecure hours and supply small support erstwhile group autumn ill. The authorities past picks up nan costs successful welfare, mislaid taxation and unit connected nan NHS. That’s not a sustainable economy, it’s a subsidy for failure.

The deeper problem is organization disadvantage. The labour marketplace is designed to reward group who tin activity full-time. It locks retired millions who could contribute: abnormal people, older workers, parents needing elasticity and those pinch criminal records. These barriers aren’t accidental – they’re structural. The reappraisal puts prevention and early involution astatine nan bosom of reform, but it should besides situation nan conditions that make activity inaccessible aliases unsustainable successful nan first place.

The authorities has nan devices to lead. Every nationalist statement could beryllium tied to nan real surviving wage and meet nan Good Work Standard aliases Good Employment Charter, arsenic London and Greater Manchester person shown. Section 32 of nan Procurement Act moreover allows nationalist bodies to reserve contracts for societal enterprises and inclusive employers that create jobs for those facing disadvantage.

These measures could build a web of employers who salary fairly, train locally and creation jobs astir existent lives. That’s really we commencement to make activity work.
Dr Katharine Sutton
Director, Aspire Community Works

Sir Charlie Mayfield is correct that nan worklessness situation won’t beryllium solved by money alone, and without civilization change, nan £6bn a year that employers are group to walk will get swallowed by paperwork alternatively of unit support.

Away from Whitehall, it is managers who make nan difference. They determine if personification pinch agelong Covid tin activity from home, if a bad backmost intends caller duties alternatively than nary job, if elastic hours mean a caller commencement aliases a mislaid worker. But excessively galore are frightened to enactment and are not trained to. A third of managers fearfulness getting it incorrect aliases causing offence, and conscionable arsenic galore opportunity that they haven’t had nan statement guidance training to support returning staff.

Employers must springiness managers nan skills and assurance to enactment early. Without that, galore group will extremity up arsenic names connected a Department for Work and Pensions spreadsheet.
Petra Wilton
Director of policy, Chartered Management Institute, London

A deficiency of eyesight has ne'er constricted my ambition, nor that of scores of unsighted and partially sighted group for illustration me. I cognize thousands of unsighted and partially sighted group are looking for activity each year, and past twelvemonth nan Royal National Institute of Blind People supported much than 2,000 group to summation aliases support employment. To genuinely unfastened up nan world of work, 3 strategy changes are essential.

First, assets nan Access to Work strategy that helps abnormal group get and support jobs. Second, investigation shows employers are reluctant to employment unsighted and partially sighted people, truthful they request to beryllium equipped to alteration this. Third, accomplishment up activity coaches to connection meaningful support.
Anna Tylor
Chair, Royal National Institute of Blind People

I publication pinch liking nan study successful which Charlie Mayfield “warned that businesses needed to play a much cardinal domiciled successful tackling a rising tide of ill-health that is pushing millions of group retired of work”.

If nan acquisition of a adjacent friend of excavation is thing to spell by, this seems highly improbable to ever happen.

My friend had worked for a assemblage for almost 25 years erstwhile she developed a chronic but superior wellness information during nan pandemic. Despite continuing to activity successfully from home, she was constructively dismissed from her domiciled simply because she was incapable to spell into nan office. The assemblage successful mobility was utterly unwilling to make immoderate “reasonable adjustments” and was, presumably, assured that she was acold excessively unwell to return them to a tribunal (which she was).

My constituent is that if employers specified arsenic universities, which we whitethorn reasonably expect to beryllium connected nan much progressive side, are behaving for illustration this, what chance is location of getting different employers to play ball?

This was a mates of years ago; my friend is still waiting for curen connected nan NHS and truthful remains incapable to work.
Libby Johnes
Llanrhystud, Ceredigion