- Date: 8 November 2023
- Category: Informative Articles, Managing Workers, Safety
There have been strong steps to promote male mental health across society over the last decade. Helping people open up about things going on inside their head is a completely positive experience. But there are still serious inroads to be made around male physical health, and there is still a lot not being done in the workplace to allow men to feel comfortable with health situation, whatever that may be. So how do we change workplaces so that they become more inclusive and understanding spaces for those with health challenges? Here at Direct365, we have an eye on workplace habits, and there’s a few things we think could help men tackle these issues.
Men’s Health in the Workplace: The Facts
There are several health-based facts pointing to the up-hill struggle men have when dealt with their health. Here are just a few:
- Men are less likely than women to seek out the help of health services
- Men are statistically more likely to be obese than women
- On average, men will die 4.5 years younger than women in the UK. According to movember.com, these are for largely preventable reasons.
- Middle-aged men are twice as likely to have diabetes as women.
How Can We Help Men at Work?
There’s a lot that society can do to help men with their health problems, especially in the workplace. On average, we spend over 90,000 hours at work over our lifetime. Why would we want to make things even more difficult for people? But here are our top 4 suggestions for helping men with their health at work.
Provide Healthcare or a Healthcare Option
This is an option many businesses already provide. But there are some that don’t. And while our NHS is excellent, there are sometimes things people need to access more urgently than others. And this is where a healthcare scheme comes in. There are two options here: healthcare provided at no cost to the employee, or an option of salary sacrifice so they can access private healthcare at their own cost but directly from their wage.
Make Provisions for Male Incontinence
There are more men suffering from male incontinence across the country than you may think. Strongly linked to prostate cancer – the most common cancer amongst men – treatment can often result in incontinence. But it isn’t solely related to cancer. It impacts so many men. More than 1 in 4 men feel depressed about urinary leakage in their life. The question is how workplace accommodate this. And one big option is to provide incontinence bins in male washrooms. PHS have produced male incontinence bins in conjunction with Prostate Cancer UK and we provide this service through our partnership with PHS. You can read more about our male incontinence bin service here.
Ensure an Open Communication with Employees
Men are statistically less likely to communicate their health problems to both professionals and their friends. Which provides a difficult challenge to employers about how much help they can provide. But ensuring open communication directly to employees but also indirectly in the culture you create. Helping the men in your team feel more comfortable, and backing up your positive culture, will create a greater sense of caring and openness that hopefully men will take advantage of.
Discuss Mental Health
Mental health provisions have improved across society in the last 20 years. But workplaces are one of the most common causes of stress. The idea that businesses can ignore the mental health of their employees is no longer right. Or not at least in the long run. Having discussions about how people are, how you can support them and whether they need advice and guidance beyond work is becoming rightly commonplace. Using these techniques, as well as actioning feedback, will help the men of your workplace become less stressed about work.
There’s no hard and fast rule about improving the health of men, but the one thing that can improve is how they speak about their health. Men must be encouraged to talk about and seek help for their health problems, before it’s too late for them. Hopefully these pointers offer help for employers and their organisations to keep helping their workforce.