Well thought-out health and wellbeing strategies are lowering employee turnover, reducing sickness absence and improving productivity, a Simplyhealth white paper has shown.
Chartered Management Institute research in the paper - entitled Good health is good business - shows there are now organisations creating the right conditions for employees to work hard successfully while enjoying working life.
But only 39% of managers said their senior management was committed to employee health; down 16 percentage points since 2007.
According to the CBI statistics, the last five years have seen a rise in presenteeism, with a significant increase in the proportion saying their organisation has a culture of people not taking time off work, even when they were ill.
The paper shows the average manager works 1.5 hours a day over contract - or 46 days in a year. Ninety two per cent had experienced organisational change over the previous year, and many more said they worked in declining organisations than in previous years.
Patrick Woodman, head of external affairs at the CMI, said: "The UK's prolonged economic downturn has put organisational performance and individual wellbeing under much strain. Some businesses are struggling to survive, and while they may want to support their employees, they may also be concerned that implementing a health and wellbeing strategy will incur increased costs at a time when cost cutting is the order of the day.
"Investment in employee benefits needs to happen at the same time as cultural change, especially when it comes to management style. Simply put, bad managers are bad for employee health and bad for business."
Howard Hughes, spokesperson for Simplyhealth, said the paper addressed the misperception that health and wellbeing programmes were costly ‘nice to haves', but rather were a long term strategic investment.
