Issued: 22 September 2023
Monday 25 September marks the start of National Inclusion Week 2023 and this year’s theme is ‘take action, make impact’.
Everyone needs support at work: take action now and make a positive impact
This is a prompt for us to reflect on our collective responsibility to create workplaces where individuals are truly supported, valued and empowered.
HSE published non-statutory guidance, a set of simple core principles, to help employers create workplaces that are safe and supportive to enable disabled workers or workers with long-term health conditions to thrive.
The guidance also contains practical examples, to demonstrate how these principles can be applied in the workplace. It’s not always easy recruiting the people you need to help your business succeed. So, keeping and developing talent in your business is important.
Conversation starter
Creating a supportive and enabling workplace starts by having conversations – to open channels for workers to speak up, raise concerns or to discuss how arrangements at work may be preventing them from achieving their goals at work.
Giving people a better understanding about how their colleagues experience work can remove stigma and pre-conceptions.
HSE has developed a Talking Toolkit to help employers and managers structure these potentially difficult conversations.
Support should be an all year round commitment
Remember not all disabilities or conditions are visible and some of your workers may not have disclosed a health condition to you. Starting these conversations may give workers the confidence to open up.
Using our guidance and Talking Toolkit can help your organisation to create an inclusive approach to workplace health.
With these tools, businesses can help prevent long-term sickness absence resulting in people falling out of work. As well as the significant impact this can have on the worker, it can also have a negative impact on the business when workers’ experience, knowledge and perspectives are lost. It can result in additional recruitment and training requirements for affected businesses and reduced productivity.
More useful links and resources
We encourage you to think about your workplace and really consider the support available to colleagues and workers:
- visit the Work Right for Everyone campaign website
- read our latest news article
- listen to HSE’s Disability in the Workplace podcast
- sign up to updates via our Work Right campaigns ebulletin
learn more about HSE’s non-statutory guidance and Health is Everyone’s Business (HiEB) consultation
Get latest news and updates from HSE across a range of industries and topics by subscribing to our ebulletins