Dame Carol Black will urge HM Treasury to remove tax barriers that stop businesses implementing staff absence management and wellbeing programs.
The measure was rejected in her previous report in 2008, but Dame Black said she was hoping Treasury would respond to a stronger case this time around.
Any such approach is likely to be welcomed by the group risk and employee benefits sectors which are keen to support government and businesses in reducing sickness absence and subsequent benefit claims.
Speaking at a WPA Health and Productivity conference, Dame Black, co-leader of the ongoing independent sickness absence review, said she was aware of the need to encourage smaller businesses to invest in health programmes for employees.
"This of course has come up so many times before and when I did the first review I put the case to Treasury to remove tax disincentives for employers, because that would be a step forward," she said.
"We will do exactly the same thing this time and we've tried to strengthen the case as much as we can. The big problem is how we can convince Treasury that the small companies would use it if we did it.
"What we're told is that companies would implement wellbeing schemes if only there wasn't the tax disincentive, but that's a leap of faith for our Treasury because often the large companies are already doing it.
"So our difficulty is persuading the Treasury that it would be a scheme that people would use," she added.
