The bosses helping staff through long-term illness
In 2019, PageGroup’s then chief executive Steve Ingham had a life-changing skiing accident that put him in a wheelchair. Yet within months he had returned to his job, leading the recruitment business through the pandemic before retiring last year.
According to Ollie Thorn, a diversity manager at PageGroup and himself a wheelchair user, the return sent a message: it is OK to have a health condition at work. Leading by example, the chief executive changed company attitudes towards staff with long-term health conditions, and encouraged managers to support them to fulfil their potential.
Ingham’s story may seem like an unusual case. But his success holds important lessons for tackling one of the global economy’s biggest challenges: long-term sickness among workers.
People with health conditions face serious obstacles getting, and staying in, work. In 2019, people with disabilities in the OECD group of richer nations were 2.3 times more likely to be unemployed than those without, an increase compared with a decade earlier.
Sickness-related absence became more commonplace during the pandemic and in some countries has continued to rise. In the UK, about 36 per cent of working-age adults report a long-term health condition, and 2.5mn are economically inactive as a result — up 400,000 since March 2020. Among those with health conditions, the average rate of sickness absence is at a 15-year high of 4.9 per cent, compared with 1.5 per cent for those without.
Sickness absence “keeps reaching record highs”, said Louise Murphy, economist at the Resolution Foundation think-tank. People who were away from the labour market for longer were less likely to return to work, she added. As policymakers battle inflation and worker shortages, this is not just a problem for individuals: “We’re not seeing those increases in labour supply that would help sustain the economy.”
For companies, illness also makes it more difficult to recruit workers, and limits growth. Yet employers are not powerless to help. By ensuring people with additional needs are managed well, experts say, they can help more contribute to the world of work.
At PageGroup, Thorn said, the approach had been to focus on the individual. Managers encourage employees to communicate their needs, and allow them to work when they are most productive. That may not be nine to five: one of Thorn’s colleagues, for example, has a fatigue condition that she manages with daytime naps, starting work early in the morning.
The recruiter has invested in training managers, improving accessibility of IT systems and simplifying processes for obtaining reasonable adjustments such as extra breaks, which employees with disabilities are legally entitled to request. If a manager is unsure about how to support an employee, they know who to ask in HR.
“A lot of inaction and sidelining of employees with disabilities and health conditions is underpinned by a fear of not having all the answers, or saying the wrong thing,” Thorn added. “The question is, ‘What can we do to mitigate that fear?’”
Mark Blois, a senior partner at law firm Browne Jacobson who has the lung condition cystic fibrosis, agreed collaboration was the most effective approach. “It’s about not rushing to judgment, [but] allowing the individual to experiment and creating an evidence base” of what works, he said.
Blois praised the managers who had supported him to pursue a “full-blooded” legal career, despite flare-ups forcing him to disappear for weeks at a time. But not everyone has been understanding.
“I got lucky. Had I not met good people and ended up working in their area, I probably wouldn’t be where I am today and making a success of it, and that’s wrong,” he said. “People with health challenges shouldn’t be dependent on the luck of the draw.”
He has used his position on the firm’s partnership committee to encourage managers to approach diversity not as “an exercise in legal compliance” but to take advantage of “unique strengths and aptitudes” people develop to cope with life’s uncertainties.
Building on his own strategy of putting agreed adjustments on record, he has worked with HR to develop reasonable adjustment “passports”. These portable documents ensure that as trainees move around the firm they are not subjected to the anxiety of repeated conversations disclosing confidential details about their condition.
In the UK, such initiatives have caught the attention of government. Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, is set to announce measures this year to tackle the rise in people unable to work because of mental health problems, including subsidies for workplace occupational health services.
The plans come after the Office for Budget Responsibility estimated that extra welfare spending and lost tax revenues linked to health-related economic inactivity costed the state about £16bn a year more than before the pandemic. More than half of people off work for health reasons in the UK suffer from mental health conditions, such as anxiety or depression.
Mental health organisations said efforts to support people who wanted to work were welcome. However, Maggi Rose, of workshop organisation Mental Health at Work, said they needed to include more diverse approaches than occupational health. “I don’t think it’s one size fits all,” she said.
Angela Matthews, head of policy and research at Business Disability Forum, a membership organisation, also warned against inconsistencies between what employers were “saying outwardly and doing inwardly”, as well as treating inclusion as a marketing activity.
Sara Weller, a former managing director of retailer Argos, has held board roles at telecoms group BT and UK bank Virgin Money despite being diagnosed with MS in her forties. She said that to make disability inclusion really happen boards were required “to set the culture”.
That means getting metrics and incentives right: measuring not only how many people with health conditions the business employs, but how valued they feel and rewarding managers who create inclusive teams.
“If boards regularly ask to see information about how many people . . . are women or people from different ethnic backgrounds, but they never ask for that information on disability, the message is very clear: that diversity only counts for gender and ethnicity, but not for disability,” she said.
Using empowering language is also helpful, she added, citing employee networks with names such as Enable. “It may sound petty, but in my experience people with disabilities passionately want the focus to be on what they can do, not what they can’t.”
Open conversations also helped, said Sophie Bassil, who hosted a forum and quiz at the PR agency where she works to explain to colleagues how Crohn’s, which affects the digestive system, affects her life.
Similarly in 2019, following a successful private equity investment in the Netherlands-based business he led, Phill Robinson became one of few chief executives to go public about their health when he told staff he had Parkinson’s. As he worked to put “diversity of health” on a par with other inclusion initiatives, before stepping down in November 2020, he hosted workshops to encourage staff to talk. Subsequently, a colleague revealed a terminal diagnosis he had received.
Blois noted that people who battled the uncertainty and disruption of fluctuating health often had attributes that organisations needed more of. “It’s possible to do, and to do it well,” he said of managing inclusively. But “it does require time; and application and curiosity”.
This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Alicia Clegg
