National awards for Hewlett Packard demonstrate that fighting cancer in the workplace not only saves lives – it’s good for business, too.
Business in the Community’s Responsible Business Awards soundly endorsed Hewlett Packard’s Fighting Cancer campaign at their awards ceremony in July 2014.
Hewlett Packard – for whom HealthScreen UK ran four cancer screening and awareness programmes – was chosen out of 13 entries as Highly Commended for its entry in the Bupa Workwell Engagement and Wellbeing Award. HP had already received a Big Tick award, which recognises an entry that demonstrates significant achievement in tackling key social and environmental issues.
Chair of the judges, Patrick Watt of Bupa, commented: “Using a broad-based wellness programme as a springboard, they [HP] focused on one particular area that has made a fundamental difference to their employees and their partners.” The judges praised the company for having “paved the way for talking about other challenging topics such as mental health at work”. They also felt there was much other companies could learn from HP’s experience, even if they don’t have the same kind of budget. Communications and the overall campaign were judged to be “very innovative” and it was found that the campaign “achieved a very good participation rate and was clearly very impactful in terms of engagement and health benefits”.
The campaign has to date revealed 65 cancers that might otherwise have gone undetected and, amongst other activities, increased employee engagement at HP by 13%. HP has also reported more tangible business benefits, including: reduced impact on the HP’s self-insured long-term absence scheme increased productivity due to reduced absence. reduced long term pressure on the private medical scheme which is run as a Trust, rather than insurance based, through earlier treatment. Mark Osborn, Total Rewards Manager at Hewlett Packard (UK & Ireland) explained: “The cost of treatment and care is greater when it’s detected later, so there will have been savings either for the NHS or HP’s private medical scheme as a result of that earlier detection. But also if we are getting that early detection and intervention, then there will be a reduction in our longer term absence cost and our life assurance cost, which can in turn increase productivity. Ultimately there is a real business benefit, in addition to the undoubted personal benefit.”
He added: “HealthScreen UK’s approach – the quality of their service and the way they supported us through it – have meant that from one initial campaign we have progressed to having four very successful and well-received campaigns covering breast, prostate, skin and lung cancers. It has proved to be a very positive partnership.” Troels Jordansen, Managing Director of HealthScreen UK commented: “We are very proud of what we have achieved with Hewlett Packard. They took an incredibly bold and innovative approach which has not only saved lives, but will, I believe, show the way forward for other companies and organisations who recognise the need to deal with this critical issue.”
