Sick need support to stay in work, says former John Lewis chair

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According to former John Luis boss, the fear of talking about ill health in Britain is taking people out of the cost of society and business at a cost of the business.

Charlie Mefield, who has performed on duty UK government With ways to search for people with sick and disabled people, people often end unemployed and facilities due to lack of health assistance in the workplace.

“There are a lot of fear. People who are afraid to express their status. …” he said.

Mafield HR manager It was often said that someone who is away from the sick should not call, if they were accused of threatening and ended in a tribunal. “They’ll do something to avoid.”

He said, as a result, people who can be better than being in action with light anxiety or frustration, they are encouraged at home while running the “clock” of the managers until they end the contract.

The challenge of Mofield, when he determines the policy recommendations for ministers in the autumn, the current vacuum should be filled in the UK system – and how to pay for it.

He told The Financial Times in an interview, when he was landing on a “growing wave” “of illness and disability that” specially suited or designed to deal with it.

Among the employers, “There is a compromise that we lose if we do not solve this problem”, from 2027 to 2021, John Luis was president of the partnership. The retailer owns its employees.

Mafield, appointed to lead the review last November, was talking to put pressure on the ministers to leave the cuts designed to facilitate illness, illness and disability, which could save the government $ 1.5 billion a year, but pushed thousands of people into poverty.

Ministers have argued that welfare reform is a “moral mission” that helps people live in facilities, but think tanks assume that jobs can be found as a result of the best renovation between 50,000 and 100,000.

“Resistance is better than cure,” said Mefield, who argued that people in the interest of the business had more support to prevent the exit of work when people first develop health conditions.

Currently Mefield said the UK system started with “Employment Act … and then it is GPS on the other end. There are very few of them,” he said.

Pressure on family physicians means that when they ask the so -called “fit notes” to justify the extended time, most of the time or skills do not have the most time or skills to evaluate.

These notes are supposed to help people stay in the work, determining them to do any of the necessary compatibility to do so. In practice, however, the physicians sign off to do more than 9 out of 10 patients to work.

After that, many are finished on an extended sick leave until their qualifications are over for the statutory ill paid. Unless employers do not provide additional assistance with professional health or ill salary-small businessmen often feel unable to do-people often demand health benefits.

Mafield points to the Netherlands as an example of the opposite extreme. There, employers must provide professional health assistance and continue wages for two years when an employee becomes ill, appointed by the employees to return to work.

“There are more powerful protection nets with higher expectations,” Mephild describes a structural process where the company’s physicians weigh the weight of patients’ interests and society.

He did not advise as far as the Netherlands to go, where one of the duties on employers is a high rate of gig work.

Even as ministers wanted to spend health benefits, he argued that no matter from taxpayers, employers or persons, they need to find ways to channel more for the health of the workplace.

“Some other countries are spending more than us as part of GDP, but they have received the return in the area, expended more on resistance and rehab,” he said. “When you think about it economically … that’s a very different picture” “