Companies drop the ‘tick the box’ approach to health and safety

A 24/7 platform offers a different approach to workplace medical care.

Stress and burnout are only some of the mental health challenges.

In the past decade, companies have begun moving from a “tick the box” approach to mental and physical wellbeing to seeing it as good business, according to the Craig Cowdrey who leads a company selling a health service to corporates.

The CEO of Sonder says that while we still have a way to go in shifting employee health from a liability issue for employers to one they see as an opportunity and a responsibility, attitudes have changed considerably.

His company is carving out a new market, going beyond mental health assistance for employees to a 24/7 service that allows workers to access specialist telephone advice on issues that can range from a sick baby to insomnia to chest pains at midnight. Trained staff can be quickly on the spot at the office or at employees’ homes to deal with issues such as workplace aggression and injuries, domestic violence and accidents, suicide ideation, welfare checks, hospital escorts, and even car breakdowns.

Sonder claims to cover 500,000 employees in Australia via contracts with some of the nation’s biggest firms. This week it released its first quarterly report analysing more than 10,000 of its most recent cases.

The report reveals that 80 per cent of employees who look for support for workplace change are suffering four or more other conditions, with back pain, chest pains, menstruation, sexual health and allergies featuring in the top 20 medical complaints.

Twenty-seven per cent of employees reaching out for support primarily need medical help, compared to 21 per cent for mental health, 20 per cent for safety, and the remainder for miscellaneous support. Sonder also deals with domestic violence and workplace bullying, and offers frontline manager support.

With constant reports of high levels of poor mental health among workers, the question is whether workplaces are getting worse or whether we are just documenting it more?

Says Cowdrey: “I think a number of studies and surveys have shown for many years that the issues have been there. We know that among the Australian population, 20 per cent of people are suffering with some level of stress, anxiety or depression at any one time. The problem has been the rate of engagement with traditional care platforms has been much lower than that. But we’ve seen, over the past two and a half years in particular, increasing the complexity of cases – the interrelated relationship between mental health challenges and medical and physical issues.”

For the past two years, people have been under stress from working remotely; from concern for their physical health; and also from ­financial concerns.

Cowdrey says there has been much transformation over the past 20 years in particular, much of it driven by the inclusion of technology in every aspect of our lives, leading to the “always on” mentality of being linked to your manager or your team at any time.

“One of the things we work with is helping to support managers about how they can better support the wellbeing of their people by making it clear where those work-life boundaries are, and when they should be connected, and when they should not be,” says Cowdrey.

He says companies need to support employees by “clear job design, clear communication, and a clear definition of what success looks like, of what the definition of done looks like”.

They then had to put in place frameworks and controls to ensure work-life balance.

“There’s a real movement now towards organisations understanding what the psycho­social hazards are in their workplace to make sure that they are doing these things to a high standard,” he says.

Cowdrey says work-life balance is defined differently for each person. “We’re in a world of personalisation and increased expectations among employees, especially the younger generation, that their employer will provide them with an environment in which they can be successful professionally,” he says.

The lines which were already blurred between work and life before Covid-19 have virtually disappeared “so what might be balanced for somebody could be quite different for someone else”.

He says: “The big change we’ve seen, particularly in the past 10 years, certainly in the past three years, is that employers recognise that supporting their people is not only the right thing to do from a moral and employee value proposition level, but also it makes good business sense. If your people are happier and healthier, they’re going to work harder, there’s going to be less presenteeism, there’s going to be less sick days. (Companies) are going to keep their people for longer. It all lines up.”

He says Sonder’s medical care model goes well beyond the “ traditional slips and trips, occupational health and safety issues”.

“We’re really about supporting somebody 24/7 because our customers now understand that if somebody is up in the middle of the night taking care of a sick child, that is going to impact their ability to be productive the next day,” he says. “You need to support somebody fully in their life, and that’s appreciated by the employees as a benefit of working for that organisation.

“In an environment in which it can be difficult to obtain access to healthcare – we see that in the news every week with emergency department wait times and people having to seek help elsewhere if they’re not a high priority – we provide an employer-funded solution.

“We’re fortunate in Australia with universal healthcare, but it doesn’t mean that access is ­immediate throughout the night.”

But while his company can help you through some issues, it doesn’t offer to conjure up a bed in a hospital. Instead, Cowdrey says it attempts to deal with issues below the threshold of emergency medical support.

He says corporate health support was traditionally about mental health “but it’s pretty hard to have a good mental output if you’re not physically healthy. It’s pretty hard if you’re tired, because you’ve been up with a sick child when you could have spoken to a nurse and received an immediate solution for the problem.

“We assist with everything from getting to and from work safely … to intervening in domestic violence situations. It’s not about us wrapping (employees) in cotton wool, but giving them access to the tools they need.

“They then appreciate that as a benefit and it also makes them a more engaged staff member, which is ultimately what the companies want.”