The government's Keep Britain Working review, published this September makes one point that's easy to miss: keeping people healthy and in work isn't just a welfare issue. It's one of the UK's biggest untapped growth opportunities. And employers don't need to wait for new laws to start acting on it.
Health-related economic inactivity costs Britain around £212 billion a year, close to 7% of GDP. That includes £132 billion in lost output and £45 billion in health-related benefits, before counting the human cost to the 2.8 million people currently out of work because of ill health.
For any HR or People Director looking at a virtual GP benefit for employees, a corporate physiotherapy service, or workplace mental health support, the real insight isn't how big the problem is. It's how quickly it needs solving.
Why a virtual GP benefit for employees can't wait.
Someone off sick for 4 to 6 weeks has a 96% chance of returning to work. Once that stretches past a year, fewer than half do. And once someone is out of work for health reasons long-term, their odds of returning within a year drop to just 3.8%.
The review's message is simple: act early, or the value of acting drops fast. That's exactly the gap a good virtual GP for business is built to close. Employees get a GP, physiotherapist, or mental health practitioner within hours, not weeks, because speed is what keeps people in work.
What good workplace health provision looks like.
The review sets out four things every employee health benefit should include: advice and guidance, case management, early treatment, and useful data for employers. It specifically calls out "early treatment for mental health and MSK needs" as a sign of good provision.
Three things do that job well:
- A workplace physiotherapy programme with no GP referral needed, so MSK problems get treated before they turn into weeks of absence.
- Employee mental health support available the same day, not a waiting list.
- A virtual GP for organisations that connects the two, so nothing falls through the gap between an appointment and a referral.
Virtual GP, physiotherapy, and mental health support working as one joined-up benefit, not three separate ones, is exactly what the review is asking employers to provide.
Corporate health assessments and the government's own prototype toolkit
The review also describes a "Work and Health Toolkit" it's building with the University of Liverpool. It's a whole-workforce health check based on three ideas: the employee benefits first, their answers stay private, and every question leads to real support.
That's a good description of what a proper employee health screening programme should already do. A genuine corporate health assessment gives each employee a useful personal result, keeps their answers private, and only shows the employer anonymised, organisation-wide data. Government is still testing this idea. Some employers already offer it.
The part employers should sit with: most
If the review's model, fast access to care, workforce health assessments, and private employer reporting, already exists today, then waiting for a national standard has a real cost. The review's own evidence says so: the same action taken a year later is worth far less.
That doesn't make the government's work pointless. Building one national standard that works the same way for every employer is genuinely hard, and worth doing. But if you're deciding whether a health assessment or a mental health service belongs in next year's benefits budget, you don't need to wait for Whitehall to make that case.
The uncomfortable part for employers: most of this already exists
If the review's model, fast access to care, workforce health assessments, and private employer reporting, already exists today, then waiting for a national standard has a real cost. The review's own evidence says so: the same action taken a year later is worth far less.
That doesn't make the government's work pointless. Building one national standard that works the same way for every employer is genuinely hard, and worth doing. But if you're deciding whether a health assessment or a mental health service belongs in next year's benefits budget, you don't need to wait for Whitehall to make that case.
Conclusion
Keep Britain Working has done the hard part: naming the problem and putting a number on it. The solutions it describes, virtual GP access, workplace physiotherapy, mental health support, and health assessments, are mostly available right now. The real question isn't whether to wait for national policy. It's whether your current employee health benefits are already behind it.
Looking for a virtual GP benefit, workplace physiotherapy programme, or corporate health assessment for your business?
