Over the past few years, dealing with impact of ill-health on employers and employees has been an issue which has risen up the agenda for organisations in the public and the private sector.

And as the Government launched its plans for a Health and Work Service last week to help combat the issue, some chunky statistics from the DWP remind us of how sickness absence affects is an issue for employees and employers.

In any one month between 2010 and 2013, just shy of one million employees were on sick leave for a month or more, over than 130 million sick days are lost to sickness absence each year and the cost to employers is around £9bn. Employees who spend more than a month on sick leave are more likely to require benefits support and many may never return to work.

The most interesting aspect of the changes is for me is that at the heart of the programme there is a clear shift to a more proactive approach to dealing with sickness absence.

In the new scheme there will be an intervention at the four week mark and an independent occupational health specialist will work with the employee to map out a return to the workplace – even if this is in a limited capacity.

Looking at the apparent success of independent occupational providers which have emerged in the last few years, it is clear that when it comes to sickness absence, a structure based on direct conversations with the employee can reduce absence significantly.

While the launch of the scheme later this year will focus on longer term sickness absence, I think it is important for employers to take the opportunity to look holistically how what they can do to reduce all kinds of sickness absence.

As our annual study into health and wellbeing at work shows, there is still a lot that can be done here.

Nearly two thirds of organisations still do not address health and wellbeing in their people strategy and 50% describe their approach as ad hoc. When the evidence shows that a planned and proactive approach is what delivers results, this is a clear area for HR to focus on and own.

Equally, organisations are still unwilling to invest in health and wellbeing in order to save money further down the line – something which is clearly a false economy.

We will have to wait and see the extent to which the new Health and Work Service drives changes in the UK bill for long term sickness absence. This shouldn’t stop every employer from re-evaluating their approach right now.

Andy Philpott is sales and marketing director at Edenred – for more comment, insight and whitepapers visit www.edenred.co.uk/ehub

You call follow Andy on twitter @andy_philpott