Employers & Occupational Health Providers
“Vitality360 was very keen help us and they provided the service we needed to be able to support our employees well with persistent pain and fatigue so that they could sustain work.”
Hannah Padfield, Head of People and Culture, IntoUniversity
Persistent pain or fatigue: is your employee having difficulty sustaining work?
We can help by providing a tailored specialist work assessment which:
Reviews fitness for work
Provides specialist recommendations
Considers adjustments and The Equality Act 2010
Utilise our expertise in this field delivered through our
Specialist Work Assessment
Who we are
We are an experienced multi-disciplinary team with over 200 years’ combined experience in persistent pain and fatigue management. Within this team Amanda, our Career & Employment Consultant brings her expertise from more than 20 years working in the Career industry.
Our expertise
We help people with persistent, pain, fatigue, and post-viral syndromes, including Post Covid-19 Syndrome (Long Covid), to optimise their recovery and manage their symptoms so they can remain in work or return to work, after a period of sickness absence.
It could include the cohort of 2 million people who are debilitated by Post Covid Syndrome (Long Covid) or the 250,000 people in the UK with ME/CFS/Fibromyalgia which all present with complex symptoms such as cognitive dysfunction, musculoskeletal pain/ migraines/ headaches and overwhelming fatigue.
The scale of the issue
2.5 million working age people are inactive because of long term sickness. 26 million people in UK with long term conditions. Source
Persistent pain: 45% of population with 25% losing their jobs, 41% of those at pain clinics report that pain has prevented them from working. Source
Persistent fatigue: 35%-69% not working due to their illness with 45% reporting temporary or permanently interrupted employment. Source
1.97 million people self reporting Long Covid. Source
81% of UK workers do not feel they achieve enough sleep (source) - which is costing the UK economy £11.5 bn per annum solely in absenteeism and presenteeism. Source
How we can help
3 x 60-minute consultations, plus report and recommendations: £625
Support for individual employees to review their existing self-management strategies and transfer these to the workplace
Clinical opinion on fitness for work
Clear advice on reasonable adjustments
Vocational Rehabilitation Programmes
These programmes will be tailored to the individual’s needs: £125* per clinical hour
Training
Tailor-made training (separately costed) to support employers with managing employees with long term conditions, delivered in consultation with our HR specialist
Expected results
Enhanced employee wellbeing
Employees working in supportive environment are more likely to:
Discuss a health condition
Ask for help when needed
Return to work following a sickness absence
Improve people management practices and save money
Save money
Improve productivity/profit
Ensure statutory compliance (e.g. disability law)
Effective absence management
Manage absence with compassion and flexibility supported through an individualised approach
Prevent unhealthy presenteeism
Avoid unfairly penalising employees with ongoing health conditions
Improve staff retention
With recommended adjustment to job roles, work environment or work pattern, support employees to adjust behaviours/lifestyle to manage their symptoms at work.
We are an employer of people with lived experience
Listen to Katherine’s personal story of living and working sustainably with ME/CFS
Employees’ feedback about how this service supported them to sustain work:
“The assessment gave me a chance to reflect on my health condition and the strategies I used to manage it. It was really helpful to have the conversations and reflections and they helped me to make improvements and recognise the big impact of the small changes.”
These were the key things that helped this person the most:
Identify small changes that I can make at work to manage my symptoms
Given me the confidence to discuss my needs and ask for adjustments
Collaboratively put together a plan that me and my employer can use to ensure I am protecting my health at work
Another employee identified these three things following our assessment:
Supported me to explore reasonable adjustments to my work
Benefited from someone objective to discuss my work with
The signposting to further sources of support such as access to work were invaluable
Another client says these three things helped her:
“The assessment was the best experience I have had as it was very supportive. I really liked that it was focused on my needs as well as the organisation that I work for. It was also an effective intervention over only a few sessions too”
Discussions were compassionate and reassuring
The advice empowered me to set and maintain better boundaries
The report provided a formalised, structured way to agree adjustments
A further employee reports this feedback:
The assessment helped me to have confidence that I wasn’t asking for too much of my employer in terms of adjustments to help me continue to work well in my role.
The process supported me to agree some new travel arrangements with my employer that would mean I would be better supported to manage my symptoms.
I have been able to reconfigure a balance in the tasks in my role to be able to sustain working.
Katherine Sewell’s experience:
Amanda worked with me over a few sessions to support me with being back at work as someone on our team with ME/CFS. Amanda skilfully supported me to
Examine some of my own attitudes and thinking about how I was working and through this encouraged me to realise that I was still ‘doing a good job’, I just wasn’t working in the quite the way I expected myself to - which was based on an outdated view of my capacity.
She helped me to articulate the practical ways in which the role could adapt and the conversations about these needs, to have with my line manager.
The main thing though, was the shift in my own internal attitudes, views and use of symptom management strategies about how work can look for someone with a long term, chronic health condition.