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HEALTH MINISTER Leo Varadkar has announced a new initiative to get public sector workers healthier.
The scheme will require public service employers to develop a ‘healthy workplace’ policy to promote the physical, mental and social wellbeing of employees.
But is this really a good idea? We asked two commentators to tackle the issue…
– Aaron McKenna
Ireland will be the most obese country in Europe by 2030, according to a recent report on modelling obesity by the World Health Organisation. We might have a different self-image as a nation than that of a bunch of chronically overweight people going around Wal-Mart in mobility scooters over in Florida, but that appears to be our destiny on current trend.We need to fight this battle on every front we can, and our workplaces will become an increasingly health-conscious place as the very tangible health difficulties of obesity begin to bite. People who are overweight or obese – such as 89% of us are expected to be by 2030 – develop a variety of illnesses that will keep them off work sick. The more overweight you are, the less productive you can be in general; as the mind doesn’t work at peak efficiency when the body is wallowing in weight.A full-time employee will spend a third of their waking hours every week in work. If school is the place to catch kids as they put on the weight, work is the place to help adults lose it.
As the State is the biggest single employer in the country, with 288,000 people on the payroll, it can both positively affect the lives of a lot of workers and help set a standard for other organisations to follow. The public sector may have a bad reputation for its work practices, but I genuinely believe that it should be a model organisation in terms of the supports and even perks provided to employees. It should attract the best people with the best standards, though of course also employ some of the hard-nosed performance practices of the best companies also.
The scheme being introduced will mandate public sector organisations to provide voluntary health related activities for employees. These could range from quitting smoking groups to exercise classes, and simple measures like organised walks. Often people simply need a nudge and an opportunity to change, and the provision of opportunities in the workplace will make it easier to participate.
I think there’s a case to made for making workplace activity – as strenuous as meeting the goal of walking 10,000 steps a day – mandatory, given the massive bills that our health service and employers are going to be running up in future dealing with the fat population. I’m all about the personal freedoms normally, but I don’t think it’s fair on other taxpayers or your employer if fat-related illness causes sick days. Public or private sector, it’s unreasonable to expect someone else to pick up the real bill for a love of ten pints and two dinners on a Friday night (don’t deny it) with a fry to soak it all up on Saturday.
I’m looking forward to seeing Dublin 2 clogged with armies of public servants on jogs at 5.30pm every evening. We should join them.
Aaron McKenna is a businessman on columnist for TheJournal.ie. You can follow him on Twitter here.
– Lorraine Courtney
Health Minister Leo Varadkar has just announced a new initiative to get public sector workers healthier. Of course he isn’t just being nice; the government have an eye on the bottom line. We all realise that the reason for tackling employee health is more to reduce absenteeism; we know they don’t really care about our cholesterol.The cost of sick leave in the public sector has been called “unsustainable” and is costing the State about €430 million, according to internal Government documents published last summer in the Irish Times.The rate of sick leave for the estimated 300,000 employees in the public sector was almost twice that of the private sector. Sick leave rates were highest in the Garda and health services – where between 10 and 12 days are lost per employee annually. Under plans to revise sick leave, drawn up as part of the State’s EU-IMF bailout, management in the public sector agreed to try to reduce sick leave by €25 million in 2012. However, the internal Department of Public Expenditure documents showed that, during 2012, sick leave in most areas of the public sector remained more or less the same.
If you’re not healthy, you should be doing something about it yourself. But should your employer help you take the initiative? There are no quick fixes and a multi-billion dollar industry has grown up overnight in the US, selling wellness programs to well-meaning employers. Today, more than 90% of all large American employers report offering one for employees. Some of these programmes are excellent and welcomed by employees. It can be nice for an employer to support exercising and quitting smoking.
But badly designed programs are not so nice, as Matthew Woessner learned. The associate professor received an email in July 2013, from his employer, Penn State, instructing him to take the online questionnaire called a “Health Risk Assessment,” reporting on his personal life and habits and if Woessner refused, he would lose $1,200.
This could happen to you, according to Al Lewis and Vik Khanna in a disturbing book, “Surviving Wokplace Wellness… with your Dignity, Finances and (Major) Organs Intact”. The book is so laugh-out-loud hilarious you may wonder if it’s really serious, but actually it’s also a sobering exposé of hazards in the worksite wellness trend in American business. What it warns is that poorly-designed wellness programmes can violate the very essence of good management practice: namely the fundamental principle that management should focus on employee performance, not employees’ personal lives.
You see, ultimately healthy living is a personal thing and the best cure for absence, they say, is someone being afraid of losing their job and turning up to work regardless of whether they are ill. With the economic uncertainly, it’s no coincidence that the rate of absence remains relatively low in the private sector. The threat of losing your job is, perversely, working to drive down absence more than anything else.
Curing a sick note culture is not easy task but let’s keep bosses out of our fridge.
Lorraine Courtney is a freelance journalist. Follow her on Twitter @lorrainecath.
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So despite Shao giving a false name initially and a false address, it is enough to evade deportation for being unlawfully in the state, so it seems anyway.
@Honeybee: No it’s not. As we can see from the judges statements when he ruled in the states favour last November, “merely sending a document to the wrong address does not make it invalid” . This is about the failures with the Garda and the GNIB , which amounted technically, to evidence being withheld from the courts. We can’t have court judgements made when all the relevant information is not submitted. Lessons learned(hopefully) check if given addresses even exist and make sure computer data recording systems are fit for purpose and data is up to date!
How much did the members of the legal trade squeeze out this farrago?
It’s nice work if you can get it.
Unbelievable..
And how much has all this fiasco cost us, the tax payer? Not being deported on a technicality. This is a joke, hes illegally here, knows that hes illegally her and so do the courts.
Meanwhile he remains an illegal immigrant and as such should be removed, no?
So the judge says that nobody is to blame for this; yes there is someone to blame: the judge!
How did he manage to get married? Would he not have to prove he’s here legally? Did he produce false documents or information for the marriage?
@Peter: No. He obviously was unaware of all the letters that were went to him over 9 years :D
@Peter: There are grounds to appeal this on the basis of his marriage .Interesting how he got married as an illegal !!
How much did the members of the legal trade make out of this farrago?
It’s nice work if you can get it.
The land of milk and honey if you’re playing the system , otherwise it’s the second highest tax taker in Europe if your a worker ,no wonder all the real brains of the country are still emmergrating ,ie doctors ,nurses,
@Gerard Heery: 2nd highest tax taker if you are a worker…..so income tax? Do you have a source for that?
@Gavin Conran: it was on the rte news last week Denmark has highest
So, has he been deported or what? Deportation should not hinge on technicalities.
‘He who seek justice must come with clean hand.’ The blameless and unintentional misleading of the court should not have rendered this deportation order invalid. It does not change the fact that he knowingly stay here illegally.
@Irish Snowden: Equity doesn’t apply in this case, and if it did, the State’s paws were dirtier.
Meanwhile, we can’t seem to extradite FFG despite their $230 debt.
@Denis McClean: Billion.
@Denis McClean: I presume you mean the people that took out loans they couldn’t afford to pay back got us into this mess, do some research
@Denis McClean: the €230bn (which is actually more like the ~$256.56bn as of this morning) on the irish debt clock? As in the debt clock that started on the state since the state was born? The same debt that will never be paid back in our lifetime, unless you’re proposing each citizen fork out circa 48k each to pay it back. This is why NTMA issue bond sales, so that they can keep up with their interest payments of this debt. To conclude, this debt is not just FFGs, its everyone’s in Ireland.
@talksense: You can’t really be that naive, can you? Here’s the PAC transcript with AIB’s chairman admitting that the Irish banks were at fault for throwing the country off a cliff. Don’t let facts get in the way of your ability to be duped. https://inquiries.oireachtas.ie/banking/hearings/dermot-gleeson-former-chairman-aib/
So why isn’t he processed for deportation with the correct information!
Anyone who is illegal should be deported it should be that straight forward. I wounder if they caught the lads that came in on a container in new port Ross late last year ?
If this was a report about an Irish man living in China, and an attempt by the Chinese police to wrongfully deport him, people here would have plenty to say in his favour. The justice system worked here as it is supposed to, the Judge protected this man from a wrongful approach to his case by the executive arm of the State.
@John Considine: But I very much doubt if the apocryphal Irish man living in China could evade the authorities for 18 years. How could he rent/buy accommodation, work (I suppose), get married, get legal aid (I suppose). Oh, and get a fair hearing at one the top courts in the land. Chinese courts convict more than 99.9 percent of defendants (source: Daily Telegraph).
@Earth Traveller: Be glad then that you don’t live there and enjoy the rights that the Irish system gives you.
@John Considine: That’s exactly how I read it. Also, I’m unsure why people are being arrested now for the crime of obstructing traffic. I’m sure we’ve all had car trouble at some point. It doesn’t sound like anything worth going to court over, TBH.
@John Considine: Nope. I want all people who are in a country they’re not supposed to be in, to be sent back to the country they came from. Even the Irish.
Best article I’ve Ever read on The Journal. By Far ! & I’ve probably read more than most, commented on very feaw. However, I must add, i do giggle at Most comments. Interesting case. Hope all works out. T
Few. Phew !
Tip of the Iceberg. It seems Ireland rewards those who break the law.
Best article I’ve Ever read on The Journal. By Far ! & I’ve probably read more than most, commented on very feaw. However, I must add, i do giggle at Most comments. Interesting case. Hope all works out. T
Ireland once again allowed to be taken for a Ride . What a complete joke, how incompet-nt we are when it comes to immigration policy for our country. We the working tax payer continues to foot the bill. This outrage will only continue until we have a world wide recession, and then we will wake up. Shame, Shame, to continue and make M orons
out of us.
just checking i’m not banned!
@Marie Broomfield: whey hey! where my initial comment gone so. so bloody annoying! (wasn’t even a toxic warning unlike this comment)
All Chinese students are here not for learning but to stay over the time on visa, its a scam to by in here in the first instance then they are in and overstayed indefinitely , have a child usually and get leave to remain. We are too soft here.
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