New weight loss drugs, AI, neurodiversity and health coaching are just some of the key trends that will drive a more proactive approach to wellbeing in 2025.
With 3,000 people a day now being assessed as unfit for work and put on sickness benefits, employers will have to find new ways of tackling the UK’s long-term sickness crisis.
Whether supporting the roll-out of weight-loss drugs, neurodiversity support or using AI to drive healthier lifestyles, there will be lots of new innovations to consider in the coming year.
Add to these new ways of tacking the mental health issues and bad backs driving the crisis and prevention is a recuring theme. Our clinical team look at the pros and cons of six trends set to have a big impact and share their insights.
1. The pros and cons of weight-loss drugs
New weight loss drugs have been proven to be able to help people lose 5-10% of their body weight in as little as six weeks. Already privately available and set to be rolled out by the NHS, they have been heralded as a new way to prevent obesity related conditions, such as chronic heart disease and cancer.
Unfortunately, as medical advisors and charities have warned, they are not a silver bullet and do not come without risk. Not only has a UK death been linked to weight loss drugs, due to organ side effects, but people can easily regain weight if underlying issues aren’t addressed.
“Weight loss drugs are like a sticking plaster,” says Claire Glynn, head of musculoskeletal services at PAM OH, “They could prove a valuable tool for dealing with a short-term problem, such as weight gain following an operation, but you wouldn’t use a sticking plaster for a wound that needs stitches, such as traumatic experience driving consumption of food as a maladaptive coping strategy.”
“We also have to look at the societal factors that have made one in four adults and one in five children obese,” says Dr Bernard Yew, medical director PAM OH, “This is as much about reducing the cost of access to healthy food, compared to junk food, and educating people how to make healthy choices on a budget as it is about tacking weight issues once they’ve arisen.”
2. Using AI to drive healthy habits
The ultimate goal of wellbeing programmes has long been to prevent employees from getting sick in the first place, however, generic wellbeing advice has often failed to deliver. Not only will generic communications about smoking cessation or menopause be irrelevant to most people who receive them, but generic advice doesn’t appeal to everyone’s motivators.
The advent of AI means that it will soon be possible to automatically send incredibly bespoke and personalised wellbeing communications to individuals. Whether this is using data about the individual, gathered from wearable tech monitoring their stress, sleep and energy levels, or generative chat tools that ask the individual what they need help with.
“Technology will become particularly important for driving healthy habits,” says Lisa Allan, business director, PAM OH. “We all know we should be eating less processed food and exercising more, but it’s all a bit meaningless until someone gets told: ‘Based on your personal data, if you carry on as you are you will develop diabetes or heart issues in the next few years. Here are some healthy habits based on your interests that you can take up now to help prevent that from happening.”
Critical to success is not only collecting and integrating data, so meaningful recommendations can be made, but also retaining a level of human coaching and intervention. This matters because even when people understand the consequences of not taking action, they can still struggle to find the daily motivation needed to develop healthy habits themselves.
3. Supporting neurodivergent individuals
Ongoing delays in receiving a diagnosis from the NHS means workplaces will increasingly have to find alternative ways to support the one in one hundred people estimated to be autistic and 2.6m people with ADHD. Not to mention other neurodivergent individuals, ranging from those with dyslexia to those with Tourette’s syndrome.
“Although not a diagnosis, workplace needs assessments, carried out by an occupational health provider, can provide a comprehensive assessment, focusing on key aspects of the job role, within just a few days,” says Nina Parson, director of psychology for PAM Wellness. “This can identify specific areas of challenge which are impacting on performance, to provide the employer with recommendations on how best to support their neurodivergent employee so they can continue to perform in their role.”
She adds, “This support may be as simple as providing a neurodivergent employee with strategies and techniques to better plan and organise their day. Or introducing assistive technology, such as voice-to-text or text-to-voice features, or even new generative AI tools that can make suggestions for the wording of an email, generate an opening paragraph or advise on specific points to consider when writing a proposal.”
However, the use of AI is not without controversy, as different tools have different merits in terms of enabling productivity, as well as challenges such as data integrity and data security across the AI platform. Critical to success will be engaging with occupational health professionals to ensure any solutions put in place genuinely remove the barriers a neurodivergent employee faces at work, rather than creating new barriers.
4. Health coaching to prevent people getting sick
With access to the NHS restricted and health insurance premiums soaring, it will become far more cost-effective for employers to coach people how to stay healthy, than pay towards treatment after they become sick.
Traditionally used by employers for people who are at risk of failing workplace medicals, or have an underlying health condition, health coaching is set to be increasingly offered to any employee who wants to become healthier. For example, people who are fit for work but want to get fitter or avoid future health conditions.
“We know from our research into the benefits of early intervention that two thirds of employees can be prevented from going absent if they are supported while they’re still in work,” says Dr Bernard Yew, medical director, PAM OH.
He adds, “That’s because biopsychosocial models can be used to look at all the factors undermine their health, not just the biological health issue, such as having a bad back, but also the psychological barriers, such as fear of pain making them more sedentary than they need to be, and social, such as a lack of social interaction with others that means they don’t have a reason to get out and about. Health coaching looks at the person in their entirety to support and motivate them to find a way back to true health.”
5. Boosting mental health
Mental health issues are now by far the biggest issue undermining employee wellbeing. The scale of the problem is set to become even greater in 2025, with thousands of people now being signed off as too sick to work due to mental health issues every week in the UK.
For the most part, they will have hit a particularly difficult patch where several things in their life have all gone wrong at once, making them feel overwhelmed. Instead of being put on incapacity benefit, they need timely mental health support, typically counselling, to help them gain the insights and coping mechanisms to find a way out of their distress.
“Mental health problems, such as feelings of depression or anxiety, are less likely to self-correct than physical issues, such as a sprained wrist or bad knee,” explains Janet O’Neill, head of occupational health training, PAM OH. “If they are to remain in work, they often need the pressure on them reduced for a time and managers to be prepared to find out how they’re coping, so they can signpost them to the professional support needed to recover.”
Employers will also need to look at the pressure they’re also putting on already overwhelmed employees, who are already struggling with the cost of living and relationship breakdown. Especially at the start of 2025, when the number of people seeking a divorce will peak.
6. Tackling ‘bad backs’
Over half of all musculoskeletal (MSK) issues are reported as being related to ‘bad backs’ even though the reality is somewhat removed from this. “When people are referred to us for a bad back, we often find they just found it easier to say they had a bad back than admit they’ve got a women’s issue or were really stressed with their job,” says Claire. “For those that are actually experiencing back pain, this also doesn’t mean they necessarily have a bad back. The pain is often the result of them not moving around enough because they’re very sedentary or had a bad back ten years ago and are worried it might go again.”
Critical to transforming this situation is again using biopsychosocial models to look at people in their entirety to understand what’s really going on and getting people more active. Instead of assuming everyone will benefit from gym membership, it’s far better to support people to do what they love, be it rock climbing, yoga, walking, dancing or gardening. There is no ‘right’ way to be active, so long as you’re active.
It's also important to bear in mind the physical toll that emotional distress can have on the body. Pain is our body’s way of alerting us that something isn’t right in our lives. If we ignore emotional pain, it can easily present as physical pain. For example, we carry tension in our backs and shoulders so when people are under intense pressure, at work or in their personal lives, this can present as an MSK issue that needs to be resolved by addressing the underlying emotional issues.
How can health coaching help?
Critical to motivating employees to create and sustain good health is coaching them to set positive goals and overcome the physical, psychological or social barriers holding them back. Our health coaching services can help in the following ways:
Physical Endurance Programme (PEP) – expert clinical support to help employees with no underlying medical or MSK issues improve their long-term fitness to mitigate health risks. Features a 6-session programme, with incremental increases in physical activity.
Get Moving Campaign – to mitigate the risk of MSK injuries and keep employees fit for work and function. Features 12 week coaching programme, including Chester Step Test Assessments, performance and endurance improvement programmes and Pilates workshops.
If you would like to know more about introducing health coaching at your organisation, please email info@pamgroup.co.uk to arrange a chat at a time that works well for you.
Get our free and fresh insights
