The recent report into the state of the NHS painted a very serious picture. The review, conducted by former health minister and respected surgeon Lord Ara Darzi, has made it plainly clear that urgent reform is needed.
The report details major contributing issues to the state of play we are in today. As such, the prime minister announced there is a "profound responsibility" on the government to address said issues. But should this be their responsibility alone?
We believe that workplace protection and associated support services have an important role to play in helping to alleviate pressure on the NHS, in tandem with the three ‘big shifts’ proposed by the government, that will lead to long-term reform. As follows:
- Using more technology to create a 'digital NHS'.
- Shifting more care out of hospitals and into communities.
- Moving from treating sickness to focusing on prevention.
We believe where workplace protection can offer the most meaningful aid is the third ‘shift’ – a movement from treating sickness to a focus on prevention.
Our latest data shows the second highest reason to make a claim for income protection is for mental health reasons, and this is mimicked in recent Grid data, which revealed that mental health was the second main cause of new claims for income protection too.
Furthermore, according to Mind, one in four of us will experience a mental health issue, which therefore presents a strain on these types of services offered on the NHS.
So how can workplace protection help in terms of prevention?
Our mental health wellbeing support service, myStrength, is available to all workplace protection policyholders at no additional cost. It can be accessed by all employees, whether insured or not, as well as their immediate family members. For those not at the stage of needing one-to-one counselling, the myStrength app can offer assistance through learning modules that are designed to help people cope with everyday life stresses.
Workplace protection serves an incredibly important purpose in that, should the worst happen, employees and their families have some kind of financial safeguarding in place.
Whether that is through critical illness, income protection or life insurance cover, nobody wants to use these products, but they are invaluable if they must.
Insurance benefits are the bedrock of workplace protection, but it is much more than that too. It is also a consistent health and wellbeing support service for employees and their loved ones.
While support services are already in place, there is still more to be done. At Canada Life, more than 27,600 employers have chosen to insure their employees with us, equating to the protection of over 2.8mn employees.
However, if we dive into the data, we can see that myStrength, for example, has had around 17,000 registrations in total, to date. Therefore, there is a large cohort of people who have access to this service but are not utilising it.
There is more we can do as insurers. During this time of major reform, our call to action is for the industry to encourage employers to (re)discover the services that are available to them with the policies they pay for.
