The Smart Clinic is a specialist provider of occupational health and corporate wellbeing packages to organisations around the UK. We explore one of their client case studies to see how occupational health made a difference to their client’s business, reducing absence costs by 60% and saving them around £1.38m per year.
The Challenge
A large nationwide energy company was experiencing rapidly increasing levels of sickness absence, primarily due to two main reasons: musculoskeletal issues and stress/mental health issues.
Historically, their business had grown by acquisition, which meant they had inherited teams and employees from other businesses. These teams, departments and business units were located in different areas of the UK.
There were varying employment contracts and sick pay arrangements across the company, however on the whole sick pay was very generous. This meant that, as well as the cost of lost productivity to the business, absences were also very costly to them.
Although there was an occupational health (OH) provider in place, there was no unified approach to managing absences. This translated to lack of standardised procedures for either escalating absence management, referrals to OH, or implementing support and adjustments.
At the time when the Smart Clinic began working with company, their costs in sick pay alone were £90k to £100k per month.
The Solution
There were several areas of focus that the Smart Clinic identified:
Flexible, remote services
The client is nationwide with employees located all over the UK, so a face to face OH service was impractical. It would have been too slow, expensive and inefficient, and required extensive travel from both the OH providers and the employees.
Via a smartphone app, the Smart Clinic introduced a programme of virtual video conferencing assessments so that employees were able to be assessed by an OH professional from anywhere in the country.
Speed and efficiency
With high absence levels that resulted in high levels of casework for the client’s HR team, any delays had a huge impact. Their current occupational health provider’s service was slow and inefficient, which was adding to the issues being experienced. Any release of administrative burden was important for this client.
The Smart Clinic introduced a central online portal and began managing all logistical arrangements, such as booking appointments, sending confirmations and reminders, and chasing outstanding tasks.
Quality of advice
The client’s workforce had job roles with defined activities, targets and pre-requisites. Therefore, it was critical that their OH partner fully understood these, the adjustments that could be made, and any occupational risks and hazards.
The Smart Clinic spent time shadowing employees, and reviewing their operational procedures and risk assessments, to ensure they had a thorough understanding of the company and employee expectations. The actual OH appointment times were also extended.
Together these factors meant that far more useful and practicable advice was able to be provided to the organisation.
Training and consistency
To ensure a fair and consistent approach across the business, the HR teams were trained, including on how to make good referrals. The Smart Clinic helped them to further develop their own internal procedures, including trigger points for OH referrals.
The Outcome
The Smart Clinic has been working with this organisation for seven years now and the company continue to invest around £30,000 per year in OH.
During this time, the client has increased their headcount by approximately 20%, yet reduced their absence costs by around 60%. Their monthly sick pay costs have fallen to around £35,000, a saving of approximately £1.38m per year against a cost of around £30,000.
The Smart Clinic has also supported the client through several legal disputes, including employment tribunals. The use of OH has protected the client significantly, and saved them further significant costs by ensuring they handle cases fairly and legally.