Thank you to everyone who replied to my original email.
I think the summary of replies so far would suggest that OH services
fall into three categories:
Must have (legal)
Should have (business)
Nice to have (morale)
....and that any OH service should be delivered in line with a
service level agreement (SLA). Most importantly, the SLA should be
specific to particular business strategies within the Trust or Company.
Again thank you to those who have replied. I remain very interested in
any further input, especially from those who have had experience of
service delivery being agreed in line with specific business strategy.
Best Regards
David
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of sharon naylor
Sent: 28 April 2011 12:59
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [OCC-HEALTH] Strategic use of OH
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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