ON the ground floor of the Royal Mail’s huge Mount Pleasant sorting office in
London, an army of postal workers is busy feeding letters into machines that
can now decipher even the most spidery human handwriting.
Three floors up, a dozen colleagues are spending the day at the gym. Helped by
occupational-health specialists, they are working out in a room full of
equipment or doing step exercises, sit-ups and stretches. They stop just
once to watch a video that challenges “fear and belief systems” around what
they are capable of after injury.
The gym, thought to be the only rehabilitation facility in the UK to be housed
on company premises, aims to get sick Royal Mail staff well enough to rejoin
their coworkers on the sorting floor. The £350,000 facility is a key part of
an antiabsenteeism programme that Royal Mail - struggling to survive in a
changing marketplace - claims has cut absence from 7% to 5%, saved £227m and
brought 3,600 staff back to work since 2004.
A study by the London School of Economics this month claimed that if other UK
business sectors with poor absence records adopted Royal Mail’s combination
of health/rehabilitation programmes and rigorous absence monitoring, they
could save £1.45 billion a year.
The latest CBI/Axa survey found absences cost the UK economy £13.2 billion
last year and said 12% of the 172m days lost were not genuine. These 21m
“sickies” - most commonly taken on Fridays and Mondays and after bank
holidays - cost the economy £1.6 billion. The survey found the gulf between
absence rates in the private and public sectors at record levels, with a
5.8day average per person in the private sector compared with 9 days in the
public.
Companies spend relatively little on employees’ health, but Dr Steve Boorman,
Royal Mail’s chief medical officer, makes a strong case for wellbeing
initiatives and, in particular, for the company’s rehabilitation centre,
designed to deal with the longest and most chronic sickness absences that
cost companies most money. Then again, he’s had to practise the sell –
inside his own organisation.
“The rehabilitation centre is an expensive resource, and management needed
convincing it would work,” he said. “But when we did the first evaluation
six months after the centre opened, we discovered a return of £2.50 for
every £1 invested and after 18 months, £4 for every £1 invested. Along with
the hard benefits of reduced sickness absence and increased productivity,
there was also the soft benefit of being seen as a caring employer.”
Most of those referred to the centre have been absent from work for months, or
even years, and are being treated for muscu-loskeletal complaints (often
back problems), which rank alongside stress as the most common reason for
being off work. Despite dealing with the “hard core” end of work absence,
the unit manages to get 80% of employees back to work.
Boorman believes it is precisely because the unit operates on Royal Mail
premises that it is so successful. “When you are off work you lose contact
with the business, colleagues and the work routine,” he said. “Coming here
for your treatment stops that happening.”
He said there had been cynicism among the workers, too, with many believing
the centre was just to save money for Royal Mail and that it was not about
the good of employees, Boorman said. “But the employees have changed their
view and so has the union,” he added.
Larry Bekoe, 47, working out in a corner of the gym, is one of its biggest
fans. The rehab centre has helped him get back to near-normal working after
an 18-month absence. He slipped a disc – although that took months to
diagnose – after trying to lift an 11kg bag that turned out to weigh 29kg.
“This centre has been great for me,” said Bekoe. “Without it, I would have
been like a zombie on the painkillers I was taking.”
Bad backs are often considered to be an excuse for malingering but there can
be little doubt that many cases – including Bekoe’s – seen by the centre are
genuine or that poor NHS advice and treatment sometimes can turn relatively
minor injuries into serious ones.
Bekoe said the usual advice from doctors was to rest. According to Tom Ronan,
occupational therapist with Rehabworks, which runs the Royal Mail centre,
not exercising an injury is often the worst advice. Bekoe spent months on
his back waiting for an MRI scan, and then months more waiting for an
operation. By the time he was referred to the rehab centre by company
doctors, he was desperate to work. Though he was on full pay for the first
six months off and half pay for the following six months, he pointed out
that he lost all the overtime pay that many Royal Mail staff rely on to make
ends meet. He also said that in the final months he was not paid at all.
With three children to support and a mortgage, he had become very “stressed
and depressed”.
“People just don’t believe you when it is back pain,” he said. “But then I
didn’t believe in back pain until it happened to me. I’m still on
painkillers but I’ve reduced them and I feel more confident after attending
the centre. The staff built up my exercises and I am training my mind that
eventually the pain will go away.”
Royal Mail engineer Mark Crowe, 39, also lay at home for months waiting for an
MRI scan for back pain, but that wait almost killed him. He was in so much
pain that he couldn’t eat but didn’t realise how dangerous the painkillers
were on an empty stomach. Crowe ended up being rushed into intensive care
and had to have two operations on his stomach before he could have an
operation on his back.
“I was referred to the centre after I came back to work,” said Crowe. “I’ve
just finished three months in the centre and though I still have a lot of
pain, I can manage it better. The hospital didn’t explain the pain or how to
deal with it but this programme has helped me understand and that has taken
some of the fear away.
“I have the confidence now to exercise through the pain. If I had known how to
treat it at the start I don’t think I would have been off for so long.”
That’s precisely why Boorman argues that wellbeing initiatives such as the
rehab centre are vital to the Royal Mail. And why he feels strongly that
other companies should consider similar initiatives to improve both the
health of employees and their own bottom line.
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Each Royal Mail office is allowed to spend money on things they require to improve their surroundings-"first line fix".Can my office actually get hold of the money? no.Now I know where the money's gone.
john, shrewsbury, uk