Harry Cramer, Managing Director of APL Health, explains how his team’s occupational health and wellbeing support can positively influence schools and their employees. 


Who are APL Health?

We’re an occupational health provider specialising in the education sector. More specifically we’re a very friendly and knowledgeable team of nurses, counsellors and other medical professionals specially trained to work with schools to help improve their general health and reduce absences. 

What do you do? 

We provide occupational health and wellbeing services to schools, colleges and academies around the UK. Some of our most popular services include occupational health assessments, counselling, stress coaching, physiotherapy, health checks and health promotion seminars. We work proactively with teachers and support staff to identify issues before they become too serious, and help staff to remain, happy, healthy, motivated and productive. 

What are the benefits of occupational health support? 

There are all sorts of benefits, but some of the most noticeable and proven ones are:

• Healthier staff. The general wellbeing, advice and health promotion that we offer means that you will have a healthier workforce. 
• Morale. Investing in your employees’ welfare not only keeps them healthy, but improves morale by showing them how important they are to you. 
• Productivity. Healthy, happy staff are more productive in the workplace. This means better educated students, and a better performing school. 
• Absenteeism. A healthier workforce means reduced staff absences. This not only saves you money and hassle with covering staff absences, but also improves the continuity of the teaching. 
• Tenure. Healthy, happy staff will stay at your school longer, which means less time is spent searching for and recruiting talent for the education sector. 

What do you see as the key steps to supporting schools? 

In our experience schools face two significant difficulties with staffing; budgetary restrictions and time challenges. This means that schools can’t afford staff absences, but don’t always have the time to put the necessary provisions in place to reduce or manage them. We support schools by seamlessly implementing proactive, pre-emptive solutions. This means working directly with the staff to manage their health issues and not taking up too much time from management teams. 

Is there a link between occupational health and wellbeing support and staff absences? 

Absolutely. The link is a perfect inverse correlation – the more proactive the health and wellbeing support, the fewer absences an organisation will see. 

Who can access your services and support? 

All schools covered by an Absence Protection policy will have access to a wealth of wellbeing services. But if you aren’t covered for staff absence insurance but would like to offer a wellbeing service to your staff we can arrange that for you too. Just get in touch with us directly. 

I wish to discuss your services, who should I contact? 

There are lots of us on hand to help, just drop us a line on 0800 862 0142 or email us using hello@aplhealth.com and we’ll get straight back to you. We don’t bite.