Good Work

For more data: OHID

Comparing Difference in level of qualifications between places

‘Good work’ means having not only a work environment that is safe, but also having a sense of security, autonomy, good line management and communication within an organisation.

The guidance highlights employment can impact directly and indirectly on the individual, their families and communities.

Good work:

• improves health and wellbeing economically and through better quality of life.
• Protects against social exclusion through the provision of income, social interaction, a core role and identity and purpose<br><br>Unemployment:
  • Is associated with an increased risk of mortality and morbidity, including limiting long-term illness, cardiovascular disease, poor mental health, suicide and health-harming behaviours.
  • Can be caused by long-term health conditions including MSK conditions such as back pain – ‘health-related
  • worklessness’.

  

Sir Michael Marmot’s Fair Society, Healthy Lives highlighted

• People’s health can be damaged at work by factors including exposure to physical hazards, physically demanding or dangerous work, long or irregular working hours, shift work, health-adverse posture, repetitive injury and extended sedentary work.
• ‘precarious jobs’ … are defined by a lack of safety at work, by exposure to multiple stressors including strenuous tasks which the worker has little control over, low wages and high job instability. There is ample evidence on the adverse effects on health and well- being produced by these conditions.
• A range of research relates issues such as job security, job satisfaction and supervisor and peer support to various psychological and physical health impacts, such as general ill health, depression, cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease and musculoskeletal disorders.

• People worried about financing care, taking time out of work to attend medical appointments, losing their job and financial security.
• Carers wanted easy-to-access information on a range of issues including eligibility for time off work for caring.

Long term conditions can directly impact people’s careers. Royal Osteoporosis Society’s survey ‘Life with Osteoporosis 2021: the untold story… ‘ highlighted that giving up work and the increased costs of living with osteoporosis causes stress and financial worries. Over a quarter have had to give up work, and almost one in five have had to take early retirement.

People living with mental health problems:

• Mixed anxiety and depression have been estimated to cause one-fifth of days lost from work in Britain.
• Risk factors for suicide tend to relate to circumstances where people feel hopeless or trapped, or difficult life events, and include problems with work or money.
• Rethink Mental Illness reported in 2021 the results of a survey of people severely affected by mental illness including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder, finding that eight in ten people reported that the fear of being stigmatised or discriminated against stopped them from doing things they wanted to do, including seeking help for a mental health problem (61%), disclosing their mental health condition to friends or family (69%) or applying for a job or promotion at work (61%)

• In the workplace only one third of women are comfortable talking about their health needs and only half say their workplace is supportive in this area.
• Period stigma can impact on participation in education or work, and period poverty impacts on mental wellbeing and dignity.

• This is poverty. | JRF
• Health matters: health and work – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
• What the quality of work means for our health – The Health Foundation
• 4047 IS WORK cov Vn1_0 (publishing.service.gov.uk)
• The impact of working conditions on mental health: Novel evidence from the UK – ScienceDirect
• wellbeing_and_work.pdf (ioe.ac.uk)
• Employment status and impact on mental wellbeing in the UK working age population: a cross-sectional analysis – The Lancet
• fair-society-healthy-lives-full-report-pdf.pdf (instituteofhealthequity.org)