Understanding the pandemic’s impact on employers and staff

Healthy Working Wales is keen to hear from a wide range of employers across Wales to better understand the current and future health impacts on employers and their staff of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on workplaces and the workforce in Wales and the rest of the UK.

The World Health Organisation has identified negative impacts of Covid-19 including rising unemployment; an increase in poverty risk and working poor; firm closures; and widening economic and health gaps between geographical areas.

We know that economic downturns and crises significantly affect the determinants of health such as income, employment and living standards.

These impact on all aspects of health and wellbeing, including mental health and health harming behaviours. However, predicting health outcomes is complex.

In partnership with Opinion Research Services (ORS) Healthy Working Wales has developed an online questionnaire for employers:

• To capture the health needs of the Welsh workforce now and going forward
• To determine key issues to consider and how to respond
• To find out what support is currently available and identify any gaps in provision.

Healthy Working Wales will use these insights to work with policy makers and other partners to address the needs identified. The insights will also inform how it develops programmes to support employers to address the pandemic recovery needs of their workforce and contribute to improving the health of the working population in Wales.

Employers are asked to complete the online survey at the ORS website. The survey will be live until 31 March 2021.

Healthy Working Wales is a Welsh Government programme delivered by Public Health Wales to work with employers to create healthy workplaces and promote good health.