In the days (0ver a decade ago) when I worked for a provider I was part of a pilot study commissioned by a government dept. The remit was to look at what on site OH in 7 sites could do to address 3 issues,
reducing sickness absence
implement an occupational vaccination service
assist with ensuring legislative compliance
The various sites had an OHA assigned to them for 2 days a week for 12 months. A big ask, some might say - to achieve such lofty ideals on 2 days a week.
Not a surprise but sad to say that not all sites were that successful at the end of the 12 months for a variety of reasons, but some were highly successful. My personal view was that the brief was too broad and largely depended on the skills/experience of the OHA rather than a clear strategic direction on behalf of both the provider and the commissioner.
Roll on 10 years and now this govt dept has a contract with a major provider to put an OHA in each of their sites to address basically the same issues, time spent on site varies from 2 days per week to maybe once a fortnight dependant on the number of employees. We shall wait and see how successful this is.
On a slightly different tangent (but IMHO there is a link) I attended a business seminar recently and one of the speakers was a marketing and business guru - she was very adamant that many people try to be "Jacks of all trades" and spread themselves too thinly, therefore overall quality of the product/service suffers as you can only achieve a medium/mediocre level, rather than delivering a streamlined body of excellent products/services to a target customer base. She argued that in this way yoiur business will thus stand out in an already overcrowded marketplace.
Food for thought?
> Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2011 11:10:35 +0100
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [OCC-HEALTH] Strategic use of OH
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Hi David
>
> I think this is a brilliant hypothesis and would be very interested to read the final thesis. My view, particularly with trusts and other public sector organisations is that they often don't have a particularly clear remit for their own existence and therefore are not able to provide a clear remit for their own support services. We all presume that the NHS is there to provide healthcare, free at the point of need, but in reality that means a vast number of different things to a vast number of people, which makes the priority list so large as to be almost unmanageable.
>
> One thing that is clear is that in order to do whatever they do, trusts need large numbers of people. People occasionally get sick for all sorts of work and non work related reasons, sometimes play games with their employers pretending to be sick, fall out with colleagues, are overworked, underworked, highly praised or dumped on from a great height. All human behaviour is there and when health is an issue, OH should be there too.
>
> I remember posting something on this list many years ago about the 3 reasons for Occupational Health - Moral, legal and business. It's proved to be a very good starting point for me and others have used similar models. It provides a very simple starting point for any organisation wanting to refocus on how it looks after its employees.
>
> Let me know off list if you want me to dig it out of the archives.
>
> Thanks
>
> Lindsey
>
> Lindsey Hall
> Independent Occupational Health Adviser
> Split Dimension Ltd
> 07771 596111
> Phone/Fax 01454 852715
> www.splitdimension.co.uk
>
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of David Wadsworth
> Sent: 27 April 2011 14:34
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [OCC-HEALTH] Strategic use of OH
>
> Hi all
> I am writing an assignment on "Corporate strategy" for my certificate in management and have decided to look at how businesses use OH.
>
> My gut feeling is that businesses/hospital trusts do not have a clear strategy for OH when they engage their services, but do it for a variety of reasons, health surveillance, sickness absence, health promotion, back care, training, vaccination, "always had it" etc. This wide remit then leads to the OH dept providing a broad range of services, rather than focusing and contributing to clear business strategies. Something my literature refers to as "strategic drift" - in that OH provide too broad a service to be able to measurably and effectively contribute to corporate strategy.
>
> I may be wrong.... but I have decided to start with this hypothesis!
>
> I would be very interested in others people views, especially if you have already looked at this within your business/trust.
> Any pointers towards relevant studies/literature would also be greatly appreciated.
>
> Many thanks in advance for any feedback.
>
> David
>
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