Health & Safety
Employee mental health tops the challenges facing organisations in 2021 Leading online training provider, iHASCO, conducted a survey of over 400 Health & Safety, HR and Training professionals, to gain a greater insight into the biggest challenges and future issues facing businesses, surrounding COVID-19 and workplace training. The research uncovered some of the common workplace trends and challenges, particularly for SMEs. The survey was split into 3 categories: Impact of COVID-19, Employee Health & Safety and Workplace training.
Impact of COVID-19 The impact of COVID-19 has been far reaching, with a much greater number of businesses suffering a negative impact rather than a positive one, as a result of the pandemic. Longer term planning has been impossible for organisations as a result of lockdowns and forced closures, as well as having a crippling effect on company finances. The pressures put on businesses have been catastrophic for
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Health & Safety
some, and become a fight for survival. 60.8% of respondents say COVID-19 has negatively affected their business in some way. Businesses have had a lot to think about, not only keeping up with the latest government announcements but also having to adapt plans and respond to the needs of their employees and customers. For some companies (22.8%) this has resulted in an increase/drastic increase in business. However for just under half the respondents it has meant a decrease/ drastic decrease in business. Around half of the respondents found staff absences a particular challenge throughout the pandemic and 39.6% found reopening after the first lockdown
particularly tough. With the government’s COVID-secure guidelines there were a lot of considerations for businesses in keeping their staff and customers safe. Other common challenges included staff training (38.2%) and setting up remote workers (33.5%). Looking ahead to a new year, staff mental health and wellbeing topped the challenges for employers for 2021 for 53.6% of the respondents. Staff health and safety (38.9%), along with budget cuts (28.3%) were also in the top 3 challenges for 2021.
Employee Health & Safety It is clear that businesses are placing employee health & safety training high on
Building & Facilities Management – January 2021
