Tackling workplace sickness would unlock growth ‘hiding in plain sight’, says former John Lewis boss

More than 250 of Britain’s biggest employers, including British Airways, Tesco and Royal Mail, have signed up to a new taskforce led by Sir Charlie Mayfield aimed at stemming the flow of workers dropping out of the labour market through ill-health, a problem officially costed at £212bn a year.

The former John Lewis chairman, whose Keep Britain Working review laid bare the scale of Britain’s sickness problem last year, said tackling unemployment linked to long-term illness would unlock economic growth that is “hiding in plain sight”.

His Get Britain Working taskforce, which also counts Sainsbury’s, EDF Energy, Currys and several government departments among its members, has two aims: preventing people falling out of work because of ill-health in the first place, and encouraging those already signed off to return.

Each of the companies involved will track sickness absence, return-to-work outcomes and disability participation, data the government says will make workplace health performance visible for the first time. Ten mayoral authorities, including London and Manchester, have also agreed to take part.

The intervention comes with the human cost of the problem all too apparent. According to the Office for National Statistics, an estimated 148.8 million working days were lost to sickness or injury last year, while UK sick days have hit a 15-year high, with mental ill-health now the leading cause of long-term absence.

Sir Charlie told the BBC the breakdown in communication between employers and absent staff was at the heart of the problem.

“I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met who said: ‘I was signed off work for three months, or six months, and I never had any contact with my employer at all,’” he said. “That’s not because the employer is a bad person. It’s because we’ve got a situation at the minute where people don’t talk to each other when they really need to.”

Not everyone is convinced. Some employers have warned that recent tax rises leave many firms without the headroom to invest in workplace health, while wellbeing experts have cautioned that smaller businesses in particular lack the tools and resources to manage employee health strategically. Others have raised concerns about pressure being placed on genuinely ill people to return to work.

Sir Charlie’s comments also land at a politically charged moment, with pressure mounting on Andy Burnham, widely expected to become prime minister later this month, to rein in a welfare bill forecast to account for 23.6 per cent of total government spending in the 2025 to 2026 financial year.

Sir Charlie said his plans, which build on the recommendations of the government-commissioned review he published last year, could help cut that bill.

“Fixing these problems at the fundamental level could make a really big contribution to getting this economy working better, for employers, for employees, for the taxpayer, for all of us,” he said. “This is not a zero-sum game. It’s not a question of employers win and employees lose and vice versa. Everybody can win.”

He suggested Burnham would back the initiative. “I can’t see any reason why he wouldn’t because of what Andy has said about good growth. If this isn’t good growth, I’m not sure what is, quite frankly.”

For Sir Charlie, the arithmetic is simple. Returning those currently out of work through ill-health to the labour market would boost the workforce without any of the usual trade-offs.

“You wouldn’t have had to build a single house, open a new channel of immigration, you wouldn’t have to wait for a cohort of young people to join the workplace,” he said. “This is basically growth hiding in plain sight.”

News Desk

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