7th March 2025

Health and work update for clients as at 10th March 2025

PROMOTING, PROTECTING AND SUPPORTING HEALTH IN WORK

Primary recipients of this and each of our regular monthly updates are asked to ensure these are disseminated to colleagues in HR, those in line management positions, and to senior management.

1. Health of Women at Work

International women’s day was on 8th March as at: https://www.un.org/en/observances/womens-day this year’s theme being “For all women and girls: Rights. Quality. Empowerment.”

On 28th February the House of Commons Library published a research briefing on Women and the UK Economy at: https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN06838/SN06838.pdf in which it is reported that female employment rate was 71.8% and the male unemployment rate was 78.2%. Of the 16.37 million women in the UK in employment from October to December 2024, the Office for National Statistics UK Labour Force Survey noted there were 195,000 more women employed than in the year before. Although overall employment rates are fairly similar in men and women, women are more likely to work part-time, at 36% of women in employment compared with 14% of men. Of note women hold 77% of the jobs in health and social care, and 71% of the jobs in education. More women in employment work in professional occupations such as engineers, doctors, nurses, teachers, accountants and lawyers at 28% compared with 26% of men. Only 17% of women work in construction.

From a health and work perspective, and in the context of economic inactivity rates for women and men, although these have become closer with larger falls in the in inactivity rate of women, there were 1.46 million women inactive due to long-term illness from October to December 2024, being the most common reason for people being inactive. This has an impact on national economic performance. Other important factors are that more mothers than fathers leave employment after the birth of her first child, and especially among those with lower levels of education, many move from full-time to part-time. The report also comments on caring responsibilities, which can also affect the length of time people can spend travelling to and from work. Flexibility over start and finish times may be an issue, particularly for women caring for children, but may also be a factor in care for older relatives.

In our experience therefore, when we are assessing the impact of health conditions, there may be a number of factors as well as the health conditions themselves that we advise are affecting capacity for people in their work. Some factors may not be able to be mitigated by the employer, but as for all employees, a supportive organisational culture, and in particular the support from the line manager, reduces risk of experienced women with health conditions and disabilities falling out of work.

2. Health Surveillance

On 14th February we in Cordell Health supported the annual conference of our sister company EOPH, held this year at Aston University in Birmingham with the theme of health surveillance. Clients may be interested in the report of this conference contained in this month’s issue of OH today at: https://issuu.com/ioh1/docs/oh_today_volume_32_issue_1_-_2025?fr=sZjAyNDY0OTE1NTA (page 22).

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