The Importance of Cancer Policies
This spring the UK government launched an independent review to Keep Britain Working, to review the role of UK employers in creating and maintaining an healthy and inclusive workplace,
The figures that have driven this review are startling:
“Today there are nearly 800,000 or 40% more people of working-age who are economically inactive for health reasons than there were in 2019. The growth in the number who are becoming economically inactive for health reasons is nearly 10 times the growth of the working age population.”
The initial discovery report says that this growth has created a loss of productive capacity for employers and the economy of 150 billion pounds. And, by 2030 the economically inactive in the UK could reach 1.4 million.
We will be contributing to this review and our comments will include:
- The volume of cancer cases is increasing, and the increasing quality of care and new treatments mean that many people are living longer and have the potential to continue working during their treatments.
- Employers want to be able to help, but our research with the Institute for Employment Studies has shown that many organisations don’t understand the scale of the issue.
We recommend organisations should:
- Begin to collect cancer in the workforce data
- Establish a dedicated cancer workplace policy
- Train HR staff on the scale, scope and opportunities to deliver best practice support to colleagues
- Train managers to give them the tools and skills to help staff affected by cancer
- Coach those people affected and mentor line managers to help them through what can be a difficult journey
You can read more about the review here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/keep-britain-working-review-discovery