For over 20 years now I’ve been involved with workplace health promotion, helping employees in UK businesses learn about their health and helping them to be proactive, rather than reactive – prevention, rather than cure. Out of the tens of thousands of employees we’ve worked with, there are a couple of people whose stories have stayed with me.
Martin’s health story
I met Martin at an office of a client where we were running employee health screenings. He was standing near the event talking to colleagues, directing them to where they could get their blood pressure or cholesterol checked. Thinking he was a wellbeing champion, I went to have a chat with him.
As it happens, he’d attend the health checks when we’d visited the year before, and his numbers were through the roof. We’d advised him to visit his GP, which he did. The doctor had run some full blood tests, and when delivering the results to Martin, the doctor told him, “If you hadn’t have come to see me, you would probably be dead within six months.”
Steve’s health story
Steve worked for a manufacturer on the factory floor. He saw the signs for a wellbeing event we were running that day and decided, on a whim, to pop along. We took his blood pressure, and it was through the roof. We took it again later in the day and it was still sky-high. His line manager drove him to A&E. Three days later, Steve had been diagnosed with a heart condition he didn’t know about, and had a pacemaker fitted.
Both of these stories are true (a few details changed, for their privacy), but they’re the exception – not every health check event we run ends up with masses of doctor visits and A&E trips. But the key detail for both employees is that neither of them knew anything was wrong with them.
If these two men hadn’t attended those health check events, the best-case scenario is that they were both on track to experience a serious cardiac event – like a heart attack or stroke – and survive. The worst-case scenario, I’m sure you can imagine.
This is why prevention is key when it comes to employee health. No business wants their employees off on long-term sick leave, and the cost of presenteeism can be even higher than absenteeism.
So, here are, in our experience, five ways that employers are successfully getting ahead of workplace health problems.
1. Using data to identify risk early
Hard data isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it is an invaluable tool when it comes to detecting health trends in the workplace.
If you track absence data (which you should be doing anyway), this is a great starting point for identifying patterns.
Does one of your staff members have a higher sickness rate than the average? Instead of confronting them about the time they take off, work with them to understand what’s going on, and if the workplace is playing a part in their time off (such as stress or burnout).
Additionally, staff who have a lower sickness absence rate than average might, on paper, look like the perfect employee. But what if they’re working whilst sick? You might not think this is too bad, but actually, they’re likely engaging in presenteeism – working at a lower productivity level, and costing your business 5 to 10 times more than if they were off sick instead.
More broadly speaking, you should also be aware of your employee demographics and the associated health concerns that can come with key characteristics like age, race, and gender. To give you a very broad idea of the health risks that you workforce could be facing, we’ve put together a free Employee Health Risk Calculator. Simply input the number of employees you have, where you’re based, and your industry, and we’ll give you the approximate number of at-risk employees for various physical and mental health conditions in your workplace, based on UK averages.
Employee Health Calculator: https://newleafhealth.co.uk/free-workplace-wellbeing-resources/company-health-conditions-calculator/
2. Investing in employee health checks
We’ve told you the stories about Steve and Martin, but we run tests on thousands of people every year at dozens of workplaces a week. On average, about 10-20% of the employees that attend our events will be advised to visit their doctor.
For some of them, maybe they were anxious and their blood pressure why high, or maybe they’d just had a fruit juice and their blood sugar spiked. But for some of those employees, that GP visit will change their life forever.
You can’t force your employees to be healthy. But you can show them their health data and give them the tools and signposting to start putting things right. And the easiest way to do that is to bring the health check to your workplace – it’s quick, it’s easy, and it benefits everyone involved.
3. Making wellbeing part of the onboarding process
Set the tone right from the outset when you hire a new employee – you are a company that cares about their health and wellbeing. Let them know it’s okay to be ill and to take a sick day.
The Global Wellness Institute identifies that companies prioritising wellbeing report up to 20% high productivity and a reduction in absenteeism. Additionally, organisations that embed wellbeing into their culture (like making it a priority from day one), experience 10% higher retention rates.
Essentially, if your business is seen to be proactively promoting wellbeing, you’re going to attract top talent. If you actually do it and make it a part of your workplace culture, you’re going to keep that talent (and keep them healthy, too!)
4. Supporting mental health proactively
Every year we wait for the CIPD Health and Wellbeing at Work Report – it’s a great tool to identify ongoing trends and challenges for businesses around the UK. But every year, the number of businesses that train their line managers to support mental health is woefully poor, with the figure sitting at just 29% in 2025.
The majority of employers support mental health at work, but most of these support mechanisms are reactive initiatives like counselling (43% of employers), phased return to work/reasonable adjustments (43%), and offering an EAP (41%).
Making reasonable adjustments it’s a great way to support wellbeing, but it works best as a proactive approach. But how do you know if that approach is needed? You train your line managers to spot the signs of mental health problems and give them the tools to support and signpost their team members.
If you take one thing away from this article, it should be this – your line managers are your boots on the ground. They know their teams, and they’re best positioned to support them; give them the right tools to do it.
So, what next?
It’s not realistic to make changes overnight. Take it slow, be methodical, and gear your strategy towards preventing poor physical and mental health, not just reacting to it. Here’s a quick rundown of what that could look like:
- Use hard data to find out which employees could be at risk of health conditions.
- Differentiate between absenteeism and presenteeism in your workplace productivity stats.
- Invest in employee health checks to help identify potential physical wellbeing issues.
- Ensure wellbeing is embedded in company culture from day one for new employees.
- Give your managers tools to spot the signs of poor mental health and to signpost to further support.
Prevention is always better than the cure, so do what you can, do what’s realistic, and start from there.
About the author
Andy Lee-O’Neil is Director at New Leaf Health. He got his love for health and wellbeing in the RAF as a physical training instructor, before becoming an experienced workplace wellbeing consultant and director at New Leaf Health. He supports large multinationals and independent SMEs in developing health and wellbeing programmes that deliver real results, for employees and for businesses.
You might also like:
