'Fit note' culture proposed encouraging people to remain in employment
The Government is set to introduce a package of reforms to overhaul the system by which employees go on sick leave from work following its acceptance of the recommendations from March's report by Dame Carol Black into sickness absence in the UK.
Announced in the new report, Improving Health and Work: Changing Lives, were a number of proposals aimed at preventing people from drifting into long-term sick leave by looking at how their workplaces could help enable staff to carry on in their roles if their physical wellbeing worsened.
The measures to be adopted include the replacement of 'sick notes' with 'fit notes' that detail what work a person can do instead of what work they cannot; the development of a National Centre for Working-Age Health and Well-Being that will provide a range of function aimed at the working population's health and wellbeing; the employment of health, work and wellbeing co-ordinators; a pilot occupational health helpline for smaller businesses; a Challenge Fund to encourage local initiatives that improve workplace health and wellbeing; and a review of the NHS's workforce's health and wellbeing.
James Purnell, Work and Pensions Secretary, said: "Now more than ever it's important to help people who are sick to stay in work so that they can support themselves and their families. These proposals will help do just that. Everyone has the right to work and we want to design a fair system which supports people so they can work when they are able."
The proposals were welcomed in many quarters as a welcome reformation of the current system.
Mark Wallace, campaign director at the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "It is only right that the focus should be on what people can do rather than what they can't. Despite the decline of heavy industry, we have more people on Incapacity Benefit than ever before. The current system simply consigns people to the scrap heap without helping them to get into work. It would be better for the people concerned, the economy as a whole and taxpayers if there was a genuine drive to help people to get appropriate jobs."
According to Dame Black's March report, Working for a Healthier Tomorrow, sickness absence costs the British economy £100bn each year with 172 million working days lost - around 2.6% of the total working time.
Of all the days lost to absence each year, 40% of them were made up of absences of longer than four weeks.
