Posted By
Professor Stephen Bevan
20 March 2013
A review of the impact that tax relief to employers – up to a limit of £500 per head - who help employees back to work after a period of absence.
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Posted By
Stephen Bevan
12 December 2012
Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) remain the single most important cause of absence from work among UK workers. With more support from public serices, this could all change.
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Posted By
Stephen Bevan
21 November 2012
The publication of our Fit for Work? reports in Australia and New Zealand earlier this year confirmed that the initiative now has a global ‘reach’. With Canada, Israel and Turkey the subject of previous reports (and Russia, Brazil and the USA in the pipeline) the Fit for Work? messages are really gathering momentum. And last Friday I had the honour to be in Tokyo to present the findings of our Fit for Work? research in Japan.
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Posted By
Stephen Bevan
29 October 2012
A 500-page document known as El Ladrillo or ‘The Brick’ has a special and painful significance for many people in Chile. It was, in 1973, the basis for what became a twenty year economic experiment. Guided by the free-market philosophy of Milton Friedman and colleagues at the University of Chicago, the so-called ‘Chicago Boys’ in the post-coup government of General Pinochet used it to shape the deregulated and privatised future of Chile’s economy. Today, of course, it’s hard to imagine that a whole economy could be run as a live experiment. It was no less than an audacious large-scale test of a political and economic ideology.
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Posted By
Stephen Bevan
10 October 2012
On World Mental Health Day it seems appropriate to pause and to reflect both on what has been achieved in promoting better understanding of mental illness, and what is still to achieve. Today I spoke at an event with Health Minister Norman Lamb MP to draw attention to the issue of mental health at work and to highlight some of the excellent work which the Department of Health as an employer is doing to promote psychological wellbeing.
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Posted By
Steve Bevan
15 June 2012
In 1998 Kjell Magne Bondevik, the then Prime Minister of Norway, took several weeks away from work to receive respite and treatment for depression. Back then his public admission of having a condition that we know 1 in 6 workers also have, was greeting with a mixed reaction.
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Posted By
Stephen Bevan
01 June 2012
Earlier this week I spoke at the Societal Impact of Pain conference in Copenhagen, under the auspices of the Danish Presidency of the EU. This is a major event bringing together clinicians, patient organisations and researchers who are working on issues arising from the growing burden of chronic pain in Europe’s population.
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Posted By
Stephen Bevan
14 May 2012
The influence of Fit for Work research now extends far beyond Europe with our study of MSDs in Australia published on 13 May.
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Posted By
Stephen Bevan
07 October 2011
Since 2007 The Work Foundation has been conducting research into the impact of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) on work participation and productivity. This research has now extended beyond the UK to most EU member states, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and now Brazil.
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Posted By
Stephen Bevan
20 September 2011
In New York this week a very eminent group of clinicians, scientists, epidemiologists and politicians have been sitting down at a major UN conference on non-communicable diseases (NCDs). They are rightly concerned about the rapidly burden of cardiovascular disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD), cancer, obesity, diabetes etc which affect more of us each year. And although the main focus is on the wider public health priorities, with people having to work longer and the workforce around the world getting older it is no longer enough to think of these, and other, conditions being confined to those who have already retired.
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Posted By
Stephen Bevan
18 July 2011
It is with tedious, metronomic regularity that reports about malingering British workers appear in our business pages. Another one has come out this morning. PwC has conducted a survey which claims that a third of workers admit to ‘skiving’ – having time off sick when they were not genuinely ill. Consultancy firms know that journalists love stories about the ‘workshy’, they also know that – in most cases – their press releases will be picked up uncritically. However I have two problems with this one.
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Posted By
Stephen Bevan
20 May 2011
This week there has been plenty of good quality coverage of the issue of mental health in the workplace. This is largely down to the excellent 'Taking care of business' campaign by the mental health charity Mind. On Tuesday I was invited to participate in a business summit, organised by Mind, hosted by AXA and addressed by Lord Freud, Minister for Welfare Reform.
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Posted By
Stephen Bevan
20 May 2011
Yesterday (19 May) I spoke at the Parliamentary launch of a new report looking at the employment experiences of people with Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis. Conducted by Crohn’s and Colitis UK, the survey-based research looked at the long-term impact of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) on the career aspirations, opportunities and choices of the 240,000 people in the UK with this condition. I have been a member of the research Steering Group.
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Posted By
Stephen Bevan
12 May 2011
The migration of people from long-term sickness absence onto Employment Support Allowance (ESA) – formerly Incapacity Benefit stands at about 3000 each week. Research published last week showed that the majority of these claimants are now suffering from mental health problems, with employers and the government seemingly powerless to stem the flow.
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Posted By
Stephen Bevan
24 November 2010
In some quarters it has become acceptable to caricature claimants of long-term sickness benefits as workshy malingerers. This has contributed to a prevailing mood of intolerance and indignation in parts of the press, reflecting that felt – it has to be said - by many ordinary folk.
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