A new government program to tackle long-term illness in the workplace has been dismissed by business leaders and consultants as woefully inadequate. Critics warned it would be akin to “draining the ocean with a teaspoon.”
The initiative, announced this morning by the Department for Work and Pensions, will fund occupational health training for 5,000 line managers working in small and medium-sized businesses across England. The free training, run by the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health, will take place between January and March next year and is designed to help managers recognize early signs of health-related problems and intervene before employees are put out of work entirely.
Ministers say the program will help tackle what they describe as an inherited crisis, with more than 2.8 million people currently registered as long-term sick – one of the highest rates in the G7. A government-commissioned analysis has found that around 800,000 working-age adults are currently unemployed due to illness than in 2019.
The financial burden on small businesses is significant. Replacing an employee due to illness costs on average more than £11,000, while each day of sickness absence is estimated to cost businesses around £120 in lost profits. The focus of the training is to enable managers to recognize warning signs such as persistent fatigue, behavioral changes and increasing absenteeism, and to have supportive conversations about workplace adjustments.
Labor Minister Dame Diana Johnson said the program would give small businesses tools they often lack. “Too often, small businesses lose skilled staff due to health issues without having the tools to support them, and that doesn’t help anyone,” she said. “This free training gives supervisors the confidence to have the right conversations and make adjustments that can help keep employees on the job.”
But experts in data, human resources, finance and consulting questioned both the ambition and impact of the program.
Rohit Parmar-Mistry, founder of Burton-on-Trent-based Pattrn Data, said the numbers just didn’t add up. He argued that training 5,000 managers would make little difference to a problem that affects millions. “This feels like outsourcing the problem to already overburdened SME managers,” he said, warning that earlier detection of health problems does not help address chronic illnesses, long NHS waiting lists or wider system failures. “A manager can recognize fatigue, but he cannot fix public health or a broken work environment.”
Kate Underwood, founder of Kate Underwood HR and Training, said the initiative only solved part of the problem. While she welcomed efforts to boost managers’ confidence in difficult conversations, she warned that the real pressure on small businesses came from the costs of sickness absence, the complexity of making appropriate adjustments and delays in accessing occupational health advice. “Training helps, but it doesn’t eliminate the financial and legal burdens that ruin small teams,” she said.
From a wellbeing perspective, Sarah Gatford, founder of Sarah Gatford Ltd, said the success of the program depends on whether it goes beyond compliance. She argued that real progress requires managers to build trust and psychological safety, not simply follow checklists. “If this helps managers, ask, ‘How can I help?’ “Instead of ‘When will you be back?’ “It’s a start, but 5,000 managers across medium-sized companies is still a drop in the ocean,” she said.
Others were more blunt. Riz Malik, director of R3 Wealth, described the initiative as disconnected from the actual priorities of small businesses. “This is probably not on the top 100 list of things SMEs want from government by 2026,” he said, calling it another example of policymaking disconnected from commercial reality.
Scott Gallacher, director at Rowley Turton, said the level of funding highlighted the gap between political messaging and operational reality. He found that in an economy with about 5.7 million small businesses, almost 80% of SMEs provide no occupational health training at all. “If you break the numbers down, that equates to one cent per person unable to work,” he said. “This suggests that this is more about the appearance than the effect.”
While ministers insist the scheme is a first step towards keeping more people in work, critics argue that without wider investment in healthcare, workplace flexibility and sustainable workplace design, the initiative risks becoming just another well-intentioned policy that fails to shift the underlying problem.
