Occupational health and welfare: an overview
Key occupational health issues
You should consider anything which affects your employees' welfare as an occupational health issue:
- Smoking, and drug and alcohol abuse - not only can an addiction affect an individual's performance, their behaviour can have a significant impact on colleagues. See our guide on smoking policies, drugs and alcohol abuse.
- Stress - excessive pressure can affect your employees' psychological, social and physical well-being. For information on tackling stress, see our guide on how to deal with stress or read about stress on the HSE website.
- Back pain and RSI - a variety of lifting, repetitive and other kinds of work, including computer work, can result in injury or longer-term disability. Good ergonomics can help reduce the risks.
- Disease prevention and control - you should promote good health and take measures to reduce the risks of disease, infection and allergy.
- Violence, bullying and harassment - physical violence or psychological intimidation can have a serious impact on an employee's well-being. An effective discipline and grievance procedure is essential in tackling such problems. See our guides on bullying and harassment and handling discipline and grievance issues.
- Work-life balance - working practices help employees achieve a better balance between their work and personal lives and can make them more productive. See our guide on how to meet the need for work-life balance.
You can read about common occupational health issues on the Safe and Healthy Working website.
Subjects covered in this guide
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