INTERNATIONAL SOS Foundation urged employers to hire a chief health officer in their organisations following the devastating effects of COVID-19.
“The pandemic is a wake-up call for many companies across the globe in regards to the health and wellbeing of their workforce.
“Now is the time for a chief health officer to be appointed at companies,” it said in a report titled “Chief Health Officer 2030: Addressing the Employee Health Needs of the Future.”
According to International SOS Malaysia & Myanmar managing director Davin Ng, many companies have reached out to them following the pandemic on how to adapt to the challenging situation.
“Globally throughout last year, we assisted with over 73,000 COVID-19 related cases, expanded our global TeleConsultation network to 32 countries and managed 1,108 COVID-19 testing facilities across 135 countries.
“Also, across 153 countries, we performed 246 air ambulance movements for COVID-19 patients and 631 for other patients, totalling 9,690 flight hours, and operated 32 charters with 2,000 passengers,” he said.
However, Ng cautioned employers to be prepared for a post-COVID-19 world, adding that the vaccines alone would not get rid of the coronavirus for good.
With that, he urged employers to get pro-active in protecting the health and wellbeing of their employees instead of just mitigating impact of a future pandemic.
“We must address sustainability issues like climate change and the myriad of other factors affecting employees’ health.
“To deal with this, an organisation needs strategic advice, vision and long-term plans, which is why the role of a chief health officer is now more important than ever,” Ng stressed.
Therefore, the report suggested the following:
1) Partner with a chief health officer to manage all business-critical health issues
- Health regulatory and policy compliance can be challenging as it varies at global, regional and local levels. Reliable and up-to-date information is key to ensure a company keep complying with the different legal frameworks where you operate.
- Workplace wellbeing management and improvement – the workforce’s wellbeing, both physical and mental, is critical to maximise employees’ productivity and ensure business continuity. It is also today seen as a lever for recruitment, retention and competitive advantage.
- Monitoring of the escalating costs to business associated with lack of proactive health risk management.
2) Recruit a chief health officer that fits your organisation’s needs
- It involves management experience from working with multinationals and across industries.
- Industry knowledge of best practices and benchmarking in the sector.
- Early visibility of emerging health trends affecting various industries.
3) Once resourced, consider asking the chief health officer for key elements to:
- Ensure having access to fact-based information from reliable sources.
- Ability to analyse the accessed information and highlight the relevant parts to the organisation.
- Providing information to the workforce and communicate effectively.
The survey findings represent responses from more than 100 professionals responsible for employee health across the world; with representation from those working in the Americas, Asia Pacific, Middle East, Africa and Europe. – Oct 23, 2021
