International Workplace launches new IOSH course on occupational health and wellbeing

International Workplace has announced the launch of a brand new IOSH course to add to its portfolio. Managing Occupational Health and Wellbeing is a management training solution to help line managers address a range of health and wellbeing management issues effectively and ensure teams remain happy, healthy and productive.

Areas covered by the IOSH course include:

• Reassessing risks for a workforce with a blend of home-working, office working and somewhere in between.
• Well-documented mental health issues in this phase of the pandemic include anxieties about the return to the physical workplace.
• More fluid work arrangements in the office, including hot-desking, which raises ergonomic
• At a strategic level, Boards need strategies for resilience and business continuity. The ‘healthyhybrid’ will become the norm.

Says David Sharp, CEO of International Workplace:

“Some 50 years after the introduction of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act in the UK, it finally feels as though the mental health and wellbeing of workers is being valued as equally by employers as their physical health and safety. It is to the issue of prevention that the focus is now turning. Two years ago, the world’s leading health and safety body, IOSH, developed a new course designed to help line managers proactively address psychosocial health and safety risk before the need for mental health first aid might arise.

“Here at International Workplace, we’ve been developing a special version of the IOSH Managing Occupational Health and Wellbeing course for delivery in eLearning and virtual classroom formats, which launches this week. The course is aimed firmly at front-line managers, to help them understand how to deal with fluctuations in people’s health and what to consider in a health needs assessment.

“It’s not trying to turn anyone into a mental health expert, but it fills a very important gap that links the risk management principles used in health and safety with the people management practices used in human resources. It seeks to address a concern around MHFA training, to ensure that any support given to colleagues is part of an integrated risk management plan for the organisation as well as the individual.”