Wellbeing at Work - Institute of Directors

The latest title in the IoD's popular Director's Guide series explains how to manage workplace wellness to boost your staff and business performance

The guide, entitled Wellbeing at work, explains how the issue of workplace health and wellbeing is rising swiftly up the UK business agenda as companies increasingly recognise the true cost of absenteeism and workplace ill-health. According to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), over 35 million working days were lost through ill-health and injury in 2004/05, while 2 million people were suffering from an illness that they believed was caused or made worse by current or past work.

There are huge costs to UK businesses associated with lack of effective health and wellbeing practice in both direct losses owing to absenteeism and possible litigation, and day-to-day underperformance across the company. There has never been a better time for directors to tackle wellness at work, with help arriving from the Government's new Health, Work and Wellbeing Strategy, a new Investors in People health standard, stress management standards and a growing body of evidence of what works to raise the wellbeing bar - and keep it there.

"As well as lowering absence rates, effective workplace wellness practices and policies have been shown to bring benefits such as lower staff turnover, better staff morale, increased productivity and an enhanced reputation as an organisation that people want to work for - and do business with," comments IoD Director General, Miles Templeman. "This guide will help directors to chart their way through the wealth of information and resources available to employers facing the challenge of addressing wellbeing at work."

Wellbeing at work is published in association with Standard Life Healthcare, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).