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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