Businesses can reduce health inequality by promoting employee health, supporting client health and influencing the health of individuals in communities, according to Legal & General.
Published today, The Business of Health Equity: The Marmot Review for Industry lays a roadmap for the role of industry in ‘levelling up’ and sets out three ways that business can improve people’s lives to reduce health inequality.
The report found that by improving the health of employees, employers can reap the benefits of a more productive workforce. Businesses can improve people’s lives by promoting employee health through pay and benefits, hours, job security, and working conditions, by supporting the health of clients, customers, and shareholders through products and services provided and investments made, and by influencing the health of individuals in communities through investment influence, procurement, and supply networks.
According to the review, companies with a strong social purpose attract and retain the greatest employees, who are increasingly looking for more than a paycheck. Employees who feel emotionally engaged and understand how they contribute personally have a stronger feeling of wellbeing within firms.
Legal & General has formed a four-year relationship with UCL IHE to advance the role of business in decreasing health inequities in the UK and to develop a UK-wide health equality network. One of the partnership’s primary results is this paper, which outlines how businesses can help increase health equity.
UCL institute of health equity director Professor Michael Marmot says: “The Covid-19 pandemic made clear a failing economy damages health. Until now the social determinants of health equity have been the responsibility of government and civil society. Business can be part of the problem of health inequalities. More positively, it can be part of the solution and has a key part to play in improving these social conditions that affect health and health equity: in conditions of work and employment; in goods and services; and in impact on the wider society and environment.
“This report builds on the good practices of businesses that are showing the way. It also shows that it is in the interest of business to have regard for health equity as well as ESG, environment, social and governance. More generally, it recognises that business can and should be responsible actors that can improve the quality of people’s lives, the environment, and as a result be forces for good in creating greater health equity.”
Legal & General CEO Sir Nigel Wilson says: “Reducing health inequalities is a key part of levelling up: literally a matter of life and death. Business can be a force for good in society if we work to identify areas where we can sustainably and positively impact people’s lives. That is the aim of this review and our partnership; for experts such as Sir Michael Marmot to help us and other businesses deliver better health outcomes.
“Businesses and ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) investors are proving key to reducing carbon emissions. ESG’s “E” is working, but the “S” is further behind – the impact of corporate activity on population health and its associated costs is not currently adequately addressed. Post-Covid, there is a strong case to consider health and health inequality as crucial to the “S” of ESG – explicitly calling out health within a new “ESHG” framework.”