Alma Economics was commissioned by the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) to develop a tool for monitoring health and wellbeing in the rail sector.

Our team conducted a thorough review of key areas in occupational health and wellbeing in the rail industry, identifying health and wellbeing monitoring frameworks already in use in the rail and other industries in the UK and abroad. This process led to the development of the Health and Wellbeing Index (HWI). HWI is a composite index that covers sickness absence, cases of diagnosed or self-reported conditions, exposure to health risks as well as mental wellbeing. Based on valuation methodologies from health economics, HWI brings these components together in a headline metric that tracks employee health and wellbeing outcomes over time.

HWI will be a useful tool for the rail industry, feeding into existing management systems to improve the health and wellbeing of workers. Our approach also has wide applicability to other sectors aiming to promote health in the workplace.

➥ The full report is available on SPARK (free access, requires registration).

➥ Read our research paper (on the wider applicability of our approach) published in Safety Science here.