Towergate’s Debra Clark (pictured), Working To Wellbeing’s Julie Denning and Onebright’s Antony Brown are among the experts who have been appointed to Legal & General Group Protection’s wellbeing advisory board.
The team of experts will work together to share cross-sector insights and will seek to help companies navigate through the increasingly complex healthcare landscape affecting their employees.
This will include the array of crossovers between the mental, physical, social and financial aspects of health and wellbeing, the insurer said.
A guiding principle for the board is the concept that work and health are inextricably linked, and in particular that good work impacts our overall wellbeing and should not be seen as a barrier to recovery, it added.
The board will initially focus on post-Covid-19 syndrome; the terminology now being used by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) for long-Covid symptoms that extend beyond 12 weeks.
L&G added that the board aims to provide accessible, simple and practical information including signposting, summaries and lived experience examples across the priority health and wellbeing issues.
It will also aim to bring forward the positive role of work and working. For example, with long-term conditions there might be a tendency to focus on the medical condition, rather than the ability of the individual to engage in productive work.
In addition to clinical, governance and general practitioner experts from Legal & General, the board members include:
- Louise Aston, wellbeing campaign director, Business in the Community (BITC)
- Debra Clark, head of specialist consulting, Towergate
- Laura Matthews, senior wellbeing consultant, Barnett Waddingham
- Antony Brown, president, Onebright
- Beverly Knops, executive manager, Vitality360
- Mike Tyler, co-founder, Fruitful Insights
- Dr Julie Denning, managing director, Working To Wellbeing
- David Newman, director, Form Health
- Lawrence Cramer, people & culture director, Inspired Villages
Wellbeing framework
The wellbeing advisory board added that their information and guidance will be aligned and integrated with relevant government initiatives, such as the NICE Covid-19 guidelines and the government’s – and group risk industry’s – response to the Health is everyone’s business consultation.
Vanessa Sallows, claims and governance director of Legal & General Group Protection, said that through the board the insurer hoped to tackle the challenges of work and health and establish a wellbeing framework for today’s workplace.
“There’s a lot of information out there about post Covid-19 but also, arguably, a lot of confusion,” she said.
“Our goal is to cut through the complexity and make it easier for HR teams and anyone involved in sickness and absence management to understand the key principles of any issue or challenge and know where to go and what to do to take positive action to address it.
“What Covid-19 has done is put the challenges of health and wellbeing into sharp focus – for employers and employees.”
