Health surveillance
Health surveillance is designed to identify ill health known to be caused by exposure to specific hazards at work by monitoring the individual.

Noise & Vibration
Exposure to loud noise is likely to have a detrimental affect on your ability to hear. If you want to hear the effects go to the HSE’s website

The Physical Agents Directive will set new lower limits for noise exposure in 2006. Productive Workplace Health can arrange hearing tests to ensure compliance with the requirements for health surveillance.

Exposure to vibration can also cause long term health problems, the Physical Agents Directive for vibration came into force in 2005 and again places a duty on the employer to provide health surveillance if workers are exposed above certain levels.

Respiratory sensitizers
The HSE estimate that there are between 1500 and 3000 new cases of occupational asthma each year and up to 7000 new cases if you include asthma made worse by work exposures. Many substances can cause occupational asthma and these include Chromium (VI) compounds found in welding fumes, coffee bean dust, eggs, flour, some hardwoods, latex and isocyanates used in paints and plastics, to name but a few. If you expose workers to a significant quantity of these then you should ensure you control measures are working by undertaking health surveillance in the form of lung function tests.

Skin assessments
Many exposures at work can cause skin problems from minor irritant dermatitis to allergic sensitizations. If you expose your employees to substances that are known irritants or sensitizers, then you should be ensuring that their skin is not being effected. This can be achieved by training your supervisors to undertake reviews of their workers but you may need the services of an Occupational Health professional to undertake this for you.

Musculoskeletal assessment
If your employees undertake repetitive arduous physical tasks, it is a good idea to monitor any problems they are experiencing so that issues with work design can be identified.

Other Services

Workplace assessments
Productive Workplace Health can look at your working environments and practices and advise you on methods of improving them, to avoid potential problems.

Stress Audits
The HSE has issued guidance advising companies to look at the stress issues in their workplaces and recommend undertaking stress audits. Productive Workplace Health use qualified health professionals to undertake this work if you need assistance in any part of the process.

Health Assessment
Health assessment can be used to ensure employees are fit to perform the tasks required of their role. This can be undertaken prior to employment being offered and enables an employer to plan for any problems that may occur. It is also a useful way of ensuring that any adaptations that may be required under the Disability Discrimination act are identified.

Attendance Management
Attendance management is designed to assist employers in controlling the costs of absence, by assessing the causes of absence and advising on solutions to enable the employee to stay at or return to work. This is normally carried out after a referral from the employer of one of their workers who has difficulty maintaining reasonable levels of attendance at work.

Health Promotion
Improving the general health status of your workers can impact on your productivity. Non smokers suffer less illness that smokers and fit healthy workers tend to have fewer problems than those with a lower level of fitness.