Month: July 2024

On Thursday 25 July,  Dr Calum Carson took part in an invited roundtable organised by the Work Foundation at Lancaster Castle with employers from the North West of England, focused on the health and work challenges currently facing organisations in 2024. Questions deliberated among the speakers included:

• What workplace health and wellbeing strategies and policies (e.g. sick pay, occupational health) need to be put in place in light of the new long-term health challenges? And what support do employers need from Government to do so?
• What innovative action have employers trialled to support workers to remain in employment whilst managing conditions? (e.g. implementing flexible leave models, using new technologies for remote and hybrid working).
• Are there key groups of workers with specific barriers or needs that employers are trying to recruit into jobs or support to stay in work?
• What role could re-designing job roles play to provide more security and flexibility to workers?
• What are the implications for the welfare and health systems, and how employers and employees engage with them? How will systems and institutions need to change and adapt?
• How do these factors play out in different sectoral and organisational settings?

This roundtable also saw an announcement of the launch of a renewed Work and Health Forum across the North West, bringing together academics, employers, civil society, and policymakers to discuss issues related to work, health and wellbeing and how best to tackle them in today’s employment landscape.

Project members Dr Calum Carson and Dr Alison Collins have spent time this summer presenting preliminary findings from the Study to an international audience of academics and practitioners at conferences across Europe. Calum gave a talk in July highlighting some of the main mixed methods findings emerging from the first stage of fieldwork for the study (involving an exploration of the experiences of people with disabilities and long-term health conditions) at the European Society of Health and Medical Sociology’s Conference on Intersectionality and Inclusion in Health at the University of Antwerp, while Alison focused on findings regarding absenteeism and presenteeism during a talk in June at the European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology’s annual conference at the University of Granada.