Health Inclusion at Work: From Awareness to Action

When we think about workplace inclusion, conversations often focus on gender, ethnicity, or background. These are crucial, but there is another, often overlooked dimension: health inclusion.

Health conditions, whether visible or invisible, shape people’s experiences of work every day. Yet too often, workplaces are not designed with health diversity in mind. This oversight creates barriers to equity, wellbeing, and performance.

Why Health Inclusion Matters

The data paints a stark picture:

• Around 1 in 3 working-age adults in the UK lives with a long-term health condition (ONS, 2022).

• Invisible conditions — such as chronic pain, mental health challenges, or neurodivergence — are frequently under-disclosed because employees fear stigma or negative career consequences (CIPD, 2021).

• The Institute for Public Policy Research (2024) estimates the “hidden cost” of sickness, including presenteeism (working while unwell), at over £100 billion a year in the UK.

When organisations don’t make space for health inclusion, the outcomes are predictable: higher absenteeism, presenteeism, disengagement, and turnover. Employees who feel unsupported or unsafe to disclose are less likely to stay and less likely to thrive.

The Benefits of Doing It Well

The evidence also shows the reverse: when health inclusion is embedded into workplace culture, the results are striking.

• A meta-analysis of workplace wellbeing programmes found a significant reduction in absenteeism, with employees taking fewer sick days when health support was proactively offered (Tarro et al., 2020).

• Research shows that engaged employees have 41% fewer health-related absences compared to disengaged colleagues, and inclusive, health-supportive workplaces are strongly linked to higher engagement (Included Health, 2023).

• Studies on psychosocial safety climate (Dollard & Bakker, 2010; Hall et al., 2013) show that when senior leaders actively prioritise psychological health, organisations experience lower burnout, reduced sickness absence, and stronger job satisfaction.

• Evidence on inclusive leadership demonstrates a direct link to increased work engagement and commitment, particularly when leaders are open to difference, including health difference (Ly et al., 2024).

Put simply: health inclusion is not a “nice to have.” It is a core driver of employee wellbeing, engagement, and organisational performance.

Moving Beyond Awareness

Awareness campaigns are useful starting points, but they’re not enough. Real inclusion means designing health into the everyday fabric of work.

Here’s how:

1. From Awareness to Practical Inclusion Flexible working, proactive adjustments, and early interventions make a tangible difference. The British Psychological Society emphasises that small, systemic changes often have the biggest long-term impact.

2. Normalising Difference Leaders who are open about their own experiences help reduce stigma. Deloitte (2020) found that visible role modelling significantly increases disclosure rates and trust.

3. Designing Systems, Not Exceptions Inclusion cannot rely on one-off accommodations. Embedding universal design principles into recruitment, onboarding, performance management, and team practices ensures accessibility and fairness are standard, not exceptional.

Towards Health-Thriving Workplaces

At Elevation Occ Psy, we call this creating health-thriving workplaces, environments where people aren’t simply “managing” health conditions, but are supported to contribute fully and thrive.

Examples include:

• Recruitment processes that explicitly invite requests for adjustments without stigma.

• Onboarding that normalises difference and signposts support pathways.

• Leaders trained and confident in having open, psychologically safe conversations.

• Organisational cultures that treat inclusion as the default, not the exception.

Questions for Reflection

To move from awareness to action, organisations must pause and reflect:

• How inclusive is your workplace when it comes to health, especially invisible conditions?

• Do employees feel safe to share what they need without fear of stigma or judgement?

• Is health inclusion embedded in your systems and culture, or left to individual managers to figure out?

Final Thoughts

Health inclusion is a business issue, a cultural issue, and above all, a human issue. When organisations ignore it, the costs are high. But when they take it seriously, the benefits ripple across engagement, wellbeing, retention, and performance.

The evidence is clear: the future of inclusion must include health. The question is, is your workplace ready to move from awareness to action?

References

• Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). (2021). Health and wellbeing at work survey report. London: CIPD.

• Deloitte. (2020). Mental health and employers: Refreshing the case for investment. London: Deloitte.

• Dollard, M. F., & Bakker, A. B. (2010). Psychosocial safety climate as a precursor to conducive work environments, psychological health problems, and employee engagement. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 83(3), 579–599.

• Hall, G. B., Dollard, M. F., & Coward, J. (2013). Psychosocial safety climate: Development of the PSC-12. International Journal of Stress Management, 17(4), 353–383.

• Included Health. (2023). Employee engagement and its impact on clinical outcomes and employer costs. Included Health Report.

• Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). (2024). The hidden cost of workplace sickness in the UK. London: IPPR.

• Ly, L., et al. (2024). Inclusive leadership and employee outcomes: The role of work engagement and affective commitment. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 93, 101–112.

• Office for National Statistics (ONS). (2022). Outcomes for disabled people in the UK: 2022. London: ONS.

• Tarro, L., et al. (2020). Evaluation of workplace health promotion programmes and absenteeism: A systematic review and meta-analysis. BMC Public Health, 20, 1906.