Building a CKD Inclusive Workplace - Data, ROI & HR Playbook

CKD is quietly costing UK employers millions in lost productivity every year - £372 million from dialysis related absences alone, with projections heading towards £2 billion in 2033. Yet most HR wellbeing strategies still treat it as an afterthought, exposing them to legal risks, loose talent, and damaging the bottomline.

In this 20 minute playbook for leaders, HR professionals and managers, we look at the numbers and actionable fixes.

* The real data and UK economic burden.

* Legal acts and reasonable adjustments

* Low cost inclusive strategies.

* Proven ROI, treating CKD employees as assets.

Illness is not a burden - ignoring it is.

LINKS :

Kidney Research UK Economic Report - https://www.kidneyresearchuk.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Economics-of-Kidney-Disease-full-report_accessible.pdf

Kidney Care UK Employer's Guide to CKD - An employer's guide to chronic kidney disease | Kidney Care UK

Equality Act guidance - Equality Act 2010

Access to Work - Access to Work: get support if you have a disability or health condition: What Access to Work is - GOV.UK

Listen now if you are responsible for your company's people and profits.

#CKD #Workplacewellbeing #HRstrategy #ukbusiness #employeeretention #inclusiveworkplace

Visit our youtube channel and give us a follow - It's Time to Unleash your Edge: Trailer. #trailer

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Hello everybody and welcome to the Chronic Hedge Unleashed. Illness is not a burden. Today we are looking at building the CKD inclusive workplace for data, return on investment, and your HR playbook. And this is the last in our series on CKD. Um chronic kidney disease. Uh not a hundred percent sure which condition I'm gonna head up with next. I often tend to go with conditions I have first, which should probably mean arthritis would be coming up next, which is probably a good one to be fair. Uh, but uh I haven't really considered what next one is. Sometimes these land on me, and they're the ones that uh I should go with and everything due to external things and everything. Or you know, maybe guys want to post something, send me some fan mail if you're on audio, send something on YouTube, LinkedIn, whatever, and say this condition I would love to hear more about in the workplace. I and and and that and I'll do that. I'll I'm happy to do that. I have no strict rules on which conditions I'm going to do, but as I say, I tend to do the conditions that I have first and then work around from there. So, following on from CKD in the workplace and the strategies for the employee, we are now into the inclusive workplace. We were talking to the employers and looking at ways the employer can support the individual in helping manage their condition for you both to get the best out of each other and battle the condition. As we say many times before, it is not you versus the employer or the employer versus you, it is you two as a unit versus the condition for you both to get the best out of it, and everybody wins. And that's what these are important about. So let's get on. Hopefully, not gonna be too long with this one and everything. A lot of a lot of the information we did do in the first two, but it's just a little bit more information for the employer. So you want a brutal truth. HR and leaders who ignore CKD are voluntarily torching profits and talent. Support isn't charity, it is the competitive warfare, and the data doesn't lie. So CKD cost UK workplaces around about three hundred and seventy-two million pounds per year in lost productivity, heading to a potential two billion by twenty thirty-three based on estimated figures. Yet most HR policies pretend that the condition doesn't exist. It's personal. But today the hard data on the hidden drain is on what HR must know legally the exact return on investment of supports or retention plus profits, and the low-cost playbook that turns CKD employees into the loyal profit machines that you wish they were. Your denial is expensive, but inclusion error wins. Stru or should we say strategic inclusion wins. Being inclusive for inclusive sake of ticking a box usually fails the moment you tick the box, because if you tick to the right box, but strategic inclusion wins because you know exactly what you need to be inclusive and you strategically put things in place to ensure that you are rather than ticking a box, you're writing a manual. And that manual will work with you for the rest of your business life as opposed to going back and saying, Well, that wasn't in the field of the box. Write it first. Preparation always beats reaction. The data. Let's look at the data, the hidden cost to employers. The total cost of CKD burden, I know this is not a burden, but in relation to the financial burden,£91 billion over the 10 years up until 2033. Estimated. Always check your own details. Indirect productivity losses alone are around 20 billion. Travel and lost input from dialysis works out as a round per employee around 12,600 yearly in productivity hits. You've got post-hospital 14,700 earnings drop, and a 9.4% and employee probability crashing. Presentism showing up not really ready to work tends to multiply the damage, and career carers themselves can lose between about 20 days per year themselves in support. That reliable employee that quietly manages their CKD is already costing you more than six days. Scale it across your workforce, and you are funding a competitor's growth while scaling your own decline by not recognizing and doing the support early. And it doesn't mean it costs you a fortune, and sacking firing is not always the answer. What do you need to know? What do you you and your HR need to be aware of in relation to legal and practical risks? Now the Equality Act 2010 CKD is often seen as a disability. If you fail to adjust, it can equal discrimination and claims, and they are on the rise. The 2025 Employee Rights Act adds day one sick pay and stronger, flexible working rights. Your risks, higher turnover, recruitment fees of around ten to thirty thousand per roll, the reputational damage, and your EHCR scrutiny is massive. We didn't know is not a defense. Managers who mishandle disclosures can create lawsuits. It's bankruptcy by tribunal. Now, as we said in the previous one, it's important for the employee to be honest about their condition and everything. So if you didn't know, if he hadn't disclosed, there hasn't been information, you may get a little bit of back in in that. Leave it at the door, then well, on your head be it. And you can end up costing you so much more money than what it would have, sticking a couple of strategies in place, doing a bit of flexible hours, and actually being there supportive, it could end up costing you 10, 20, 30 times more, and you could end up losing more than just that employee due to the ripple effect of other people saying, Well, if they ain't gonna help him, you know, if they ain't gonna spend hundred quid on a chair or something like that, we're just gonna be thinking a bit of equipment. We're not gonna give like Fred a bit of time off to go and do his dialysis to save his life, then what they're gonna do when it comes to me and I need something. Well, they're not gonna be there for me either, I'm off to. So it's about communication, but you know, it's two-way communication. You you want you to be able to work well, you need the employee to work well as well. So let's look at some solutions. Low-cost, inclusive playbook. Always do your own research on top of it, always do your individual analysis and individual assessments. You can do an overall assessment, like our one, Sida, when you do our workplace um assessment, you can uh be looking at um our video where we do talk about the audits as well. That'll give you an idea of where your areas of need are. You know, uh is it retention, is it pay, is it uh is it something else? Toxicity in the workplace, what what is it that's causing our problem, where are our leaks? Once you understand where your leak is, you can then address that leak effectively, and then you would do your individual assessments with your people to work out what their needs are based on the leaks. You can then create effective programs through well-being, through other means, through various different things to then create the best environment for both of you to thrive. So let's look at some of them. Policy, CKD awareness training, disclosure safe processes, and chronic illness champions. What about adjustments, workplace assessments, flexi hours, hybrid working, private dialysis space or break space, extra breaks, role tweaking, you know, no lifting, those types of things, and access to work core funding. Get it have a look at the if you're not seeing the access to work stuff, go and have a look at that. Really important. Support, look at EAPs, peer networks, phase returns, post transplant integrated into your well-being strategy. Wellbeing strategy isn't just Muffin Mondays and head massages or a couple of inspirational talks now and again on tell you how they did it and how you can too. It's about getting what's right for your individual people of working out of going well. This Fred's got a CKD, he don't need no muffin Monday and a head massage. What he needs is some extra breaks and some extra time and some support. Well we'll put that in place. Save you so much money money, so much more. You don't want to hear an inspirational talk. It's not going to help him because the individual's giving the inspirational talk hasn't got CKD. So unless it's addressing what he's actually got, it's pointless. It needs to be tailored to the individual. And even though we're saying you can't have an individual policy for every single employee, if you've got like a thousand employees, generically, a lot of these conditions tend to have the similar sort of aspects to billion well-being strategy. A lot of them will say like like endometriosis, flexi time, space, ckd, flexi time, space, autism, flexi time, space, because of lights and things like that. A lot of them are the same sort of requirements. There'll be some little tweaks in there that you can tweak for cluster groups, and go right well there that's for our CKD people, that's for our autistic people, we can cluster in there, but there'll be a general thing that the majority of conditions will hit the same solutions and you can put them all in that.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

And I'm telling you right now, none of them are Muffin Monday. None of them.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

You might have your normal there's no such thing as normal, you might have your neurotypical people that have no conditions, that absolute that love Muffin Monday. But all of us chronic people and every and most of the others that touch that is an issue, certain foods are an issue, Muffin Monday does absolutely nothing to help my condition, to help me stay in work. To be honest, I w I'd prefer to be off on Monday because I don't want the muffin, because it triggers one of my flare-ups and everything, and it makes me ill, and then I look really bad, then I'm not having Francine's carrot cake, and Francine's is really upset because I've not had her a carrot cake, because she doesn't know that me having carrot cake means I'm ill for three days. It's important to have those understandings.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

So just it don't cost a fortune, it's just called little tweaks, little twigs.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

So let's look at it. Look, peanuts, absolute peanuts compared to replacement. Do them or watch skilled people work at walk even. If you think about it, you know, it's your um if you're you're going through an agency to hire somebody, you're probably looking at about ten to thirty thousand pounds to replace somebody, depending on your job, sometimes more, sometimes less. Round about the average is around six thousand pounds. So you're starting off, it's gonna cost you six thousand pounds to replace Fred. I like to use Fred. Fred is now gonna cost me six thousand pounds before I even start. I've now lost him because I've decided to get rid of him rather than you know give him a bit of time off here, there and everywhere, rather than working for like six hours. I don't want to do anything, we're just gonna get rid of Fred. So now I've lost now. Fred's been with the company for six years. He understands everything about the company and his role. He is totally proficient, can work on his own, doesn't require any any work whatsoever, any help, understands it for like the back of his hand, probably better than you. Brilliant employee, until he got sick, and then obviously I did the time off. Instead of being supportive, we've got I've sacked him. So now I've got to replace him. It's gonna cost me six thousand pounds before I start because obviously I've got to go through all the advertising and things like that. Michaela, our uh hiring manager, but also does all our office stuff, is now gonna take our time out of her office role to do all the paperwork side of hiring in the hiring process for somebody else and do all the interviews and everything else. So I'm going to lose her in her in a traditional role as office manager, which is gonna cost me money as the employee. So let's just say for the sake of argument, it cost is another£2,000 because you've got to like cut days and everything. It's gonna cost me an additional two thousand. Now we're up to eight grand. We then decide to get in excuse me. We then decide to get in Michael. Michael has never worked in this role before. He might know the job based on his um his CV and he might understand the theory behind the job, but he's never worked at this your your office before. So he doesn't understand any of it. So he's gonna need some training. So Michaela or whoever has now got to take time out of their role to train Michael. So we're gonna add another£2,000. This could be more, could be less, but we're gonna call it£10,000. So now it's cost me£10,000. I haven't even started. Fred was on the job for quite a period of time and everything, and he was on the wage as it is now, and he was probably due an um wage rise. But Michael's coming in, and Michael wants the wage that Fred was on. But Fred's been there six years, so he didn't start on that wage. He's gradually built up to that wage, but Michael wants that wage because that's the job he's taking on. So we're just gonna call it an extra£2,000.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

So now it's£12,000. Not even started. Guy's not even started. Now Michael starts. He's done his training, he's done his things. Now no offense to Michael, but he's useless.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

He's not as good. We won't call him useless, he's not as good as an employee. He needs he takes longer to do some of the things, his work isn't as good quality because he's not got six years of experience behind him, he's needing to learn a lot more things and everything, things are a lot slower, and it's costing you more in relation to output. Now let's just say it's costing an additional four thousand pounds in relation to your return. It's now cost you an additional fifteen to sixteen thousand pounds for the year to replace him, and he's not as good.

SPEAKER_01 16:41

He's not as good. You could have three Michaels, you could have five Michaels, and he's not as good as the one Fred.

SPEAKER_00 16:48

Fred could have taken on part-time, and he'd still be better than the Michaels that you brought in to replace him. Wouldn't it have been better just to keep Fred and give him like, you know, a bit of extra time off and you know, a little bit of support here, there and everywhere? Because now what you've heard is Nancy, who was really good friends with Fred, has seen that you got rid of Fred when he really needed the support. And she's got a few things that are niggling hurt, but instead of actually coming to talk to you about it, she's just gone and got another job. And Nancy's been there ten years. So you see the rook-on effect of it, you're now up to like£30,000 in loss, plus additional presentism, plus additional absentism, plus additional things where you could have actually just put a couple of things in place that have cost you, I don't know, grand, thousand pounds, two thousand pounds, compared to your thirty thousand pounds you're currently losing by replacement. It it's those types of things, and that's what tends to be missing from a lot of these. People don't look at the knock-on effect of losing somebody, of getting rid, of not putting the thing these things in place. And that's why we talk about these things. It's looking at putting things in place to keep people in work who are great at their job. Because they you both win. You both win. So we'll get back into those types of things. So let's look at the return on investment, retention and profits rocketing. Now, supporting chronic employees equals higher engagement. You can look that up, lower turnover, general well-being. Now that's where you put in money and you get your return. In general circumstances, it's between four pounds seventy and five pounds thirty per pound invested. Now you look at Delatte for those types of figures, that's where we've got ours from. There, and retention alone can save between ten and thirty thousand pounds per employee, as we've just mentioned. Expanded CKD management, so SGLT2I plus support can yield 16 million pounds plus in net savings nationally via few dial dialysis cases. The real outcome, loyal institutional knowledge, reduced absenteism will boost productivity. Now we talked a little bit about that about fewer diet dialysis. Now, once you're on stage four, stage five, dialysis is quite more is quite expected. But when you're on stage three, it isn't. So by adding in support that is not just looking at once they hit dialysis, looking at bringing in things or removing things to help people who are on stage three, moving to stage three, to prolong the time before they hit stage four can be massive. So, for example, if you have uh I don't know what they call them, uh whether you have the food, vendor, vending machine, vending machine. If you have a vending machine in the office, you're a big office, but you've got a vending machine, and in that vending machine you've got um um Mars bars, sweets, all the chocolates are available, but you know, all those types of things, you know, energy drinks, all full of sodium, potassium, things that flare up multiple conditions, and let's be honest, are not very good for you. And they cause crashing actually. They things like that actually will cause more presentism than they actually save. Oh, they need a bar, we'll give them an energy bar. That that's that's a no. The the real food, you know, having things in there. That's why I said joke about with Muffin Monday and all that type of stuff, you know. Muffin Monday could cause more of a crash than it actually does a well-being hike. Because yes, it sounds really nice. Hey, muffins, woo! It uh because of the stuff that's in them, it can actually cause a presentism spike in there because of the drainage that it has on your body, and it causes flare-ups and makes some people more tired, like chocolates, like energy jinx, the crash. And if you're still at work, that will affect you while you're working. So looking at the the the different things you could put in that vending machine, yes, some of them might go, what on earth are you doing? Putting you know fruit-related stuff in there, we want a chocolate bar. It's like, yes, but we want to make sure that you keep working. We're gonna bring in fruit, we're gonna bring in real food, we're gonna bring in things. Instead of having Muffin Monday, we're gonna have Taco Tuesday where we bring in stuff that's really good, it's got you know vegetables and all this type of stuff, all these really colourful things, and everybody's gonna like have a bit of enjoyment, we're gonna m make everything up and everything, it's gotta be fun. You know, and it but it has that types of food in that makes you more energetic to be able to do the job rather than straining you like pizza. I mean pizza's great, but it when you're all having a big pizza. For one of the like big places and everything. Nobody's doing work after that. They're all bloated, you're all like tired and everything else. Do that for your night out. In in the office where you want people to be working, bring in the foods that help their energy spike and doesn't cause crashing. It sounds simple. Yes, some people might complain and go, why are they bringing in this? But you're maintaining their health. You're bringing in health practices. Go for a walk, go for a group walk. I don't even know. Um I I've worked with a company, and you won't mind me saying it at all, um lab creative uh and everything. And he uh Warrior is brilliant, brilliant, brilliant guy. And he came on one of my um uh one of my workshops um a couple years ago and uh we talked about this type of stuff and he's done well-being walks with his with his team. They they they all do like computer work and everything else, but they all go out for a walk all together. And it's not and it's a case of moving. They're moving their bodies, they're moving that, and it's to keep their energy spiked up. They do he does things in the office, he has different things in place in there to motivate their employees to keep them healthy, keeping people healthy in work means a lot to them, and they do really well with it, and they have staff that will have stayed longer because of their culture in there, and that's the right way to be looking at it, and that's the things that you could be looking at, and that doesn't cost the earth. We're not looking at saying you need to put£20,000 in restructuring and sticking a lift in your um in your two-floor office. Yes, it's gonna be difficult with people in a wheelchair, absolutely, but you've got to be thinking about you know effectively and things like that. Not everything when you say work uh workplace well-being means 100 grand spent in workplace well-being. You know, some of these things literally cost nothing.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

So it's looking at those types of things. As we talked about, return on investment. It can actually be higher as well.

SPEAKER_00 24:07

The four to five pounds dependent on what you actually do can actually be a lot higher. In some cases, it can be up to ten pounds, maybe even more, on what you actually put in there. And it's so it's important to look at it and research it around what you're actually able to do as well. Now, companies that treat CKD as an asset, keeping talent that competitors will appoach. Support isn't soft, it is an advantage. Ignoring it and you're choosing higher costs, lower profits, and talent hemorrhages. So let's look at it there. CKD illness is not a burden, it is a profiting strategy. If you order your policies this week, download Kidney Care UK's U employer guide, I think it's in the workplace one, but I'll stick it in here as well. You need to be looking at how you can uh get the best the best out of your employees. If you want up employees that are gonna are going to be a hundred percent for you, they're gonna give you everything that then boosts up your profits, productivity, yeah. We've got a working thing. You need to give back and giving back and just saying here's your money and here's your sick pay is not it. You need to be looking at other ways of how we can keep people in the job, how we can keep people working at a hundred percent. Now, when I say a hundred percent, I work at seventy percent because my body only works at seventy percent, but my seventy percent is a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_01 25:39

Sometimes more. In there that depending on what I can give. So Fred with his 70% is worth five hundred percent of Michael or the Michaels that you've hired in place.

SPEAKER_00 25:55

It's not about being aggressive in here. Sometimes a talk can be it might come across as a graphic, so that might be the autism in there or cold. It's about working together, it's about putting things in place as you as an employer working with the employee to get the best for both, where you both benefit. It is bridging in the middle. They are not the problem, you are not the problem, the condition is the problem. You're not gonna fix the condition, but you could prevent other people from getting said conditions within reason, but like healthy eating, healthy exercise, things like that. Some conditions are caused by other things. Mine is obviously I drank in my early 20s and my teens and everything very, very heavily. I I've got a massive sweet tooth, I ate cake, sweets, things. I used to eat 16-inch pieces, I used to be 18 stone. You know, I did a lot of damage to my body in relation to that, plus a motis, plus all the other stuff and everything else that just compounds to it, and I didn't exercise. So my stages of boosting up my things for negative is quite expected, but I didn't have any support for the employees within reason. There have been employers that have worked with me with my conditions throughout the years, but when I was younger, we would have pizzas, we would have muffin mundies, we would go out for drinks. There was times where we'd go out and play squash and things like that, but there were few and far between. But there was things in there that it was all about the f the heaviness of it rather than the support side of it. And if I had got more of that support side of it, who knows? I might have stopped drinking sooner. I might have looked at the healthier foods quicker. I might I'd only properly started looking at the healthier side of health when I got sick. I'd always thought about it, but when I got sick, I looked at it because it became something I needed to do to be able to move forward, or I wouldn't be able to work again.

SPEAKER_01 28:10

And I want to be able to work.

SPEAKER_00 28:12

And most people do want to work, they just lack that support to help them get the best out of it. And that's what these are all about is getting the best out of it for both you, the employer, and me, the employee, or vice versa. So I really appreciate your time today. Uh it would be great if you could share uh this with uh colleagues and with uh other companies that you know and everything. Uh send me some messages if you want a different condition uh putting across anything that you've got out of it would be fantastic. That's always always my happiest time. It's never the amount of downloads of anything else, it's always about what people have said that they've got something out of it because that's what that's what I do it for. You know, to get something out of it to to bridge in that gap, impacting people. I want to impact a million people to understand that illness is not a burden. That's the employer's employee, and bridging that gap between the pair of yet massively, massively important to me. So, what I want to do is I just want to say thank you. And our next video is going to be on the audit, going back to the audit and uh episode three for that. Cannot remember what it's called for the life of me because I'm going to write down. But it's uh uh we're gonna be talking about that. And if you are the employer and you are listening to that, the audit is definitely uh an episode you want to start start with that as well. You would that would be great for you as well. Um so it's that time again. It's time to unleash your edge and your work, your life, business. I've already said your life, so keep messing that up, but it doesn't really matter. You know what I mean. I'm gonna really appreciate it, and I will see you soon again. Thank you. Bye bye.