Understanding Occupational Health

When I was limping around the office with plantar fasciitis, I was advised to pull my toes back, roll a spiky ball over the sore spot and rest. None of those treatments worked but I could not stop telling people about it, finding solace in their sympathy and interest. It made a change from Doctor Co-pilot and the local physio’s printed exercises.

I could have gone to occupational health (OH) because it was affecting my wellbeing and productivity. For some reason I didn’t as I have always struggled with the idea of being unwell and unable to work. I can’t do it but I expect other people to do it. Being an HR Business Partner, I am always advising managers to seek employee consent for occupational health advice on their fitness for work and workplace adjustments. Because they are the experts, right?

But expertise can be in the eye of the beholder. Does occupational health repeat what employees say or what the clinician thinks based on their training and what they heard?

Like HR, occupational health advise and managers decide. OH provides independent, work-focused clinical advice. Managers retain responsibility for deciding what is reasonable and practicable and recording the rationale for their decisions.

OH advises on:

• Fitness for work and attendance issues
• The impact of an illness, disability or health condition on work
• Workplace or reasonable adjustments
• Return-to-work planning after sickness absence
• Preventative measures to support health and wellbeing
• Likely recovery times and any work restrictions that may apply
• Ill health retirement
• Fitness to engage in formal meetings and investigations

OH is an advisory service, not a treatment service. It does not diagnose medical conditions, provide treatment or make management decisions. OH advice is valid for three months.

It is easy to make assumptions with the best intentions about people’s conditions, disabilities and workplace adjustments. Please avoid doing this because it can cause problems. This is why employers pay occupational health providers for their medical advice for the workplace. Your observations of the situation and what help the employee needs to do their job can inform the consultation between the clinician and the employee.

Use occupational health early to help people stay in and return to work was the theme for this year’s Occupational Health Awareness Week from 21 to 27 September 2026. Let’s seek occupational health advice early, implement workplace adjustments promptly, and keep an audit trail showing what was recommended, what was implemented and why.

Occupational health reports are concerned with fitness for work and workplace support, not the disclosure of private medical information. Choosing not to engage limits the medical information available to inform management decisions on your employment.

I have read hundreds of OH reports ranging from excellent, good, adequate and unsatisfactory. A good referral describing the role and how health matters are affecting it puts the onus on the clinician to provide a high-quality report. Managers can ask OH clinicians for clarity and challenge unhelpful advice to get value for money. Then comes the next step of working with the employee to understand the advice, apply reasonable workplace adjustments and determine the impact it has on the employment relationship.

Most of the employment tribunals I have been involved in have included OH reports and disability discrimination claims. The lessons learned from these cases says managers should:

• check reasonable adjustments and disability-related considerations early
• maintain a complete evidence trail
• apply the correct policy; and
• demonstrate active and robust case management.

I was reading a Financial Times article UK contends with rise in workplace disputes about disability discrimination (opens in a new tab) which said: “A rising tide of disputes over disability discrimination is an “enormous challenge” to the tribunal system and is adding to the multibillion-pound cost of workplace conflict to employers, the chair of [Acas] has warned.” 

Not only are employers facing pressure to meet the needs of neurodiverse staff and those with mental or physical health conditions, artificial intelligence is making it easier for claimants to create lengthy and complex claims to state their case and demonstrate their “legal expertise”. When cutting through the AI text to analyse the evidence, the OH reports will be essential to your defence.

The aim of OH should always be to help people do their jobs without disadvantage or detriment. Sometimes you have to learn lessons to achieve that. Collaboration is the key to making OH better and benchmarking the quality of expertise.  

What do you think about occupational health?