A new government plan aimed at tackling long-term sickness at work has been dismissed by business leaders and consultants as woefully inadequate, with critics warning it amounts to “emptying the ocean with a teaspoon”.
The scheme, announced this morning by the Department for Work and Pensions, will fund occupational health training for 5,000 managers working in small and medium-sized businesses across England. The free training, delivered by the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health, will start between January and March next year and is designed to help managers quickly spot signs of health-related problems and intervene before workers are completely out of work.
Ministers say the plan will help tackle what they describe as an inherited crisis, with more than 2.8 million people currently registered as chronically ill – one of the highest figures in the G7. A government-commissioned analysis found that around 800,000 more working adults are now out of work due to illness than in 2019.
Financial costs for small businesses are significant. Replacing a worker lost to illness costs more than £11,000 on average, while each day of sickness absence is estimated to cost firms around £120 in lost profits. The training will focus on equipping staff managers to recognize warning signs such as persistent fatigue, changes in behavior and increased absenteeism levels, as well as having more supportive conversations about workplace adjustments.
The Minister for Employment, Dame Diana Johnson, said the program will give small business owners the tools they often lack. “Many times small businesses lose skilled workers due to health problems without the tools to support them, and that doesn’t help anyone,” he said. “This free training gives line managers the confidence to have the right conversations and make changes that will help keep people on the job.”
However, experts across the fields of data, HR, finance and consulting question the desirability and impact of this initiative.
Rohit Parmar-Mistry, founder of Burton-on-Trent-based Pattrn Data, said the numbers don’t add up. He pointed out that training 5,000 managers will make little difference to the problem affecting millions. “This feels like handing out the problem to overworked SME managers,” he said, warning that spotting health problems early does nothing to fix chronic illness, long NHS waiting lists or wider system failures. “A manager can see fatigue, but he can’t fix public health care or broken workplaces.”
Kate Underwood, founder of Kate Underwood HR and Training, said the program addressed only half of the problem. While he welcomed efforts to improve management’s confidence in having tough conversations, he warned that the real pressure on small companies comes from the cost of sickness absence, the complexity of reasonable adjustments and the delay in receiving workplace health advice. “Training helps, but it doesn’t remove the financial and legal problems that sink small groups,” he said.
From a health perspective, Sarah Gatford, the founder of Sarah Gatford Ltd, said that the success of this program will depend on it going beyond the implementation of the law. He pointed out that real progress requires managers to build trust and psychological safety, not just follow checklists. “If this helps managers ask ‘How can I help?’ instead of ‘When are you coming back?’, it’s a start, but 5,000 managers across the SME sector are still at sea,” he said.
Others were dull. Riz Malik, director of R3 Wealth, described the program as disconnected from the real priorities of small businesses. “Perhaps this is not in the top 100 things that SMEs want from the government in 2026,” he said, calling it another example of making goals divorced from commercial reality.
Scott Gallacher, director at Rowley Turton, said the level of funding exposed a gap between political messaging and the reality of performance. He noted that almost 80% of SMEs do not provide occupational health training at all, in an economy that has approximately 5.7 million small businesses. “If you break down the numbers, this equates to pennies per person out of work,” he said. “That suggests this is more about optics than impact.”
While ministers insist the plan is the first step to keeping more people in work, critics argue that without deeper investment in health care, workplace flexibility and sustainable job creation, the move risks becoming another well-intentioned policy that fails to address the underlying problem.
