“It’s no use telling somebody at the age of 62: you should be fitter and I want you to work to 72. An early start should be made to enable young people to become sustainable workers and acquire a good lifestyle that will serve them well later on. As individuals progress through their working lives, employers need to be willing to upskill them, or if necessary, change their skill set. Flexibility about working hours and place of work is ever more important. This approach requires people who are not frightened of change.”
Prof Dame Carol Black, senior policy advisor on work and health to three British governments, shared this advice in her recent interview with the British Safety Council. She will be a keynote speaker at the British Safety Council’s Annual Conference ‘Health and work in a changing world’, to be held on 5 October 2016, at The King’s Fund in central London.
This year, the British Safety Council’s Annual Conference will provide a platform for sharing evidence, better practice and business experience of managing employee health and wellbeing that helps to create more resilient and successful organisations.
The conference will be chaired by Steve Hails, director of health, safety and wellbeing at Thames Tideway Tunnel. He is also the former health and safety director at Crossrail.
The event will feature a number of case studies about organisations working across a range of sectors, which are leaders in their industries with their record of managing health in the workplace and their commitment to facilitating the return to work of employees with health conditions, such as Unipart Group and Microlink.
The implementation of health and wellbeing strategies in the workplace will be explored during a panel discussion at which Lawrence Waterman, director of health and safety at the Battersea Power Station Development, and Professor Stephen Bevan, head of HR research development at the Institute of Employment Studies, together with other practitioners and experts, will share their insights and advice with conference participants.
Adapted from press release by Joseph Green