Businesses should consider a four-day working week and regulate working hours to promote a healthy work-life balance supporting mental and physical health, University College London (UCL) is recommending.
The university also called on companies to prioritise mental health at work including the protection of good mental health by providing effective signposting to mental health services and counselling services when appropriate.
It added there should be parity between physical and mental health conditions, including in all sickness pay, leave and other benefits.
Reduce health inequalities
The recommendations featured in a report from the UCL Institute of Health Equity, published in partnership with Legal & General, to provide guidance for how businesses can reduce health inequalities.
Overall, the report – The Business of Health Equity: The Marmot Review for Industry – sets out three overarching ways that business can improve people’s lives by reducing health inequality.
These were:
- Promoting the health of employees through pay and benefits, hours and job security and conditions of work;
- Supporting the health of clients, customers and shareholders through products and services they provide and investments they make;
- Influencing the health of individuals in the communities through investment influence, procurement, and supply networks.
Other recommendations alongside the potential four-day week and mental health support were:
- Ensuring pay for all employees, contractors and workers throughout supply networks provide a minimum income for healthy living;
- That employers work with their whole workforce to support good physical and mental health;
- That companies consider the benefits they offer including sickness pay, parental leave and childcare as a means of reducing health inequalities and use their influence over companies they contract with to ensure these benefits are more widely available;
- That flexible working is encouraged to promote a good work-life balance;
- That businesses play a key role in supplying consumer products, including affordable and nutritious food, that enable people to live a healthy lifestyle.
‘Business can be part of the solution’
The report argued that by improving the health of their employees, employers can reap the benefits of a more productive workforce. It highlighted findings of a previous study that estimated 30% of the shortfall in productivity in the Northern Powerhouse compared with the rest of England was due to ill health.
UCL Institute of Health Equity director Professor Michael Marmot said: “The Covid-19 pandemic made clear a failing economy damages health. Until now the social determinants of health equity have been the responsibility of government and civil society.
“Business can be part of the problem of health inequalities. More positively, it can be part of the solution and has a key part to play in improving these social conditions that affect health and health equity: in conditions of work and employment; in goods and services; and in impact on the wider society and environment.
“This report builds on the good practices of businesses that are showing the way. It also shows that it is in the interest of business to have regard to health equity as well as to ESG, (environment, social and governance).
“More generally, it recognises that business can and should be responsible actors that can improve the quality of people lives, the environment, and as a result be forces for good in creating greater health equity.”
ESHG framework needed
The publication forms part of Legal & General and UCL IHE’s four-year partnership aimed at furthering the role of business in reducing inequalities in health in the UK and establishing a UK-wide health equity network.
Sir Nigel Wilson, CEO of Legal & General, (pictured) added: “Reducing health inequalities is a key part of levelling up: literally a matter of life and death. Business can be a force for good in society if we work to identify areas where we can sustainably and positively impact people’s lives.
“That is the aim of this review and our partnership; for experts such as Sir Michael Marmot to help us and other businesses deliver better health outcomes.
“Businesses and ESG investors are proving key to reducing carbon emissions. ESG’s “E” is working, but the “S” is further behind – the impact of corporate activity on population health and its associated costs is not currently adequately addressed.
“Post-Covid, there is a strong case to consider health and health inequality as crucial to the “S” of ESG – explicitly calling out health within a new “ESHG” framework.”