Night Club reacts to Sir Charlie Mayfield's Keep Britain Working review
night club reacts to sir charlie mayfield’s keep britain working review
Today we saw Sir Charlie Mayfield’s Keeping Britain Working review published, and the announcement of employer vanguards tackling ill-health (including Night Club partners Transport for London and British Airways).
This work resonates strongly with Night Club’s ongoing advocacy to improve outcomes for nighttime workers who face higher risk of both physical and mental health challenges than daytime workers.
Key takeaways from Sir Charlie’s review:
Sickness absence is at a 15-year high, at great economic cost
Many employees and managers experience a ‘culture of fear’ in relation to exploring health disability in the workplace; the aim should be to ‘re-humanise’ the workplace
Today’s model sees health at work often left to the individual and the NHS, but this needs to shift to a shared responsibility between employers, employees and health services
Employers need to do more and are uniquely placed to act on prevention of and rehabilitation from illness - they stand to gain directly from higher productivity and lower costs
Government’s role is to incentivise employers and employees to act
Night Club has directly supported over 14,000 workers at over 40 employers to cope better with working shifts and at night, through sleep expert-led education for individual workers combined with data and advice for employers. We also facilitate a consortium of employer partners exploring together how to support the best outcomes for night workers.
Sarah Douglas, Director of The Liminal Space and Founder of Night Club said: “We founded Night Club because the millions of people working at night are too often overlooked in workplace health and wellbeing support. We welcome Sir Charlie Mayfield’s landmark review which spells out the huge opportunity to employers from a focus on preventing ill-health in their teams. This is a particular priority in relation to night workers who have worse rates of cardiovascular disease, mental health conditions and workplace accidents than their daytime counterparts.
”Many employers are already acting as vanguards taking active steps to prevent ill-health developing in their staff. This is something to celebrate and build upon. Within this, we must ensure support is available to and appropriate for night workers, who are too often the forgotten shift.”
To find out more please get in touch: info@night-club.org.
Night Club has published a free guide for employers of night workers.