90-Day Workforce Health Risk Assessment

Executive Summary

• The 90-Day Workforce Health Risk Assessment is a workforce-wide risk diagnostic that measures where mental health and musculoskeletal risk concentrates by employee cohort, delivered inside 90 days. The single action this page asks for is to book a consultation.
• It produces cohort-level heatmaps, financial impact modelling, and executive-ready reporting, so HR Directors know where risk sits before absence escalates.
• Mental health and musculoskeletal conditions are the two leading causes of work-related absence in the UK, and the assessment is built to find exactly which cohorts carry that risk.[^1]
• The assessment sits upstream of your existing EAP, occupational health, and physiotherapy provision. It tells you where to direct that spend rather than replacing it.
• Primary fit is UK employers with 1,000+ employees, with 500 to 1,000 a secondary fit.

What the Workforce Health Risk Assessment is

The 90-Day Workforce Health Risk Assessment is a workforce-wide risk diagnostic that measures where mental health and musculoskeletal risk concentrates across an organisation, delivered by Champion Health within a fixed 90-day window. Every employee is invited to take part, not a self-selecting sample, and results are segmented by cohort so you can see which teams, sites, or job families carry the highest risk. The assessment produces cohort-level heatmaps, financial impact modelling that puts a cost on where risk sits, and executive reporting written for board-level decisions.

It is not a wellbeing survey and it is not a benefit you offer employees. The assessment reads risk at population level and returns a map of where absence is most likely to escalate next, broken down by the two conditions that drive most work-related absence.

The 90-day timeframe covers the full cycle. We scope the assessment, collect and model the data, and deliver the executive readout inside that window, so you move from commissioning the work to acting on a costed risk map in a single quarter.

Together, the heatmaps, financial modelling, and executive reporting form the evidence base that tells you where to direct existing wellbeing investment before absence turns into cost.

Why absence data alone doesn't explain workforce risk

Absence data tells you what already happened. It records the days people were off, the reasons they gave, and the departments where the numbers spiked last quarter. None of that tells you where the next wave of absence is building, or which employee cohorts are carrying risk that hasn't yet turned into a sick note. By the time a mental health or musculoskeletal case shows up in your absence figures, the cost is already on the books.

Mental health and musculoskeletal conditions are consistently ranked as the two leading causes of work-related absence in the UK.[^1] Because these two condition types dominate, a single absence figure hides which of them is actually driving a team's lost days. A rise in absence within one team could stem from a spike in anxiety, a run of back injuries on a shift pattern, or both at once. Absence data groups these into the same number and leaves you guessing at the cause.

Cohort-level risk visibility shows where mental health and MSK risk is concentrating right now, broken down by team, role, and location, before that risk converts into lost days. You see the pressure forming rather than the damage after the fact.

Existing wellbeing spend so often underperforms because it targets the wrong cohorts. Without upstream targeting, the budget spreads thin across the whole workforce instead of reaching the pockets where absence is about to escalate.

The three-stage model: Identify, Prevent, Escalate

The Workforce Health Risk Assessment sits inside a three-stage model that moves an organisation from risk visibility to targeted action. Identify runs the diagnostic that maps where health risk concentrates across your workforce. Prevent deploys self-management content to the specific cohorts that diagnostic surfaces. Escalate routes higher-risk cases into the pathways you already fund.

Prevent and Escalate depend entirely on what Identify finds. Without cohort-level evidence, prevention content goes out untargeted, and escalation happens only after absence has already started. The assessment is Stage 1 because every decision downstream needs the risk map it produces.

Stage 1 — Identify: the Workforce Health Risk Assessment

Identify is the 90-day diagnostic itself, and it measures risk across your entire workforce rather than the fraction that has already gone absent. Every employee is invited to complete a validated assessment covering mental health and musculoskeletal conditions, the two leading causes of work-related absence in the UK.[^1] The output is a picture of risk as it stands now, not a record of what already went wrong.

The value comes from segmentation. The assessment breaks results down by cohort, so you can see how risk differs across departments, sites, job roles, shift patterns, and demographic groups. A warehouse team carrying high musculoskeletal risk looks nothing like a contact centre carrying high anxiety and burnout risk, and the diagnostic separates the two clearly enough to act on each.

Those findings arrive in formats built for the people who approve budget. Cohort-level heatmaps show exactly where risk sits highest, so you can point to a specific site or function rather than a workforce-wide average. Financial impact modelling attaches a cost to that risk, translating elevated anxiety or back pain in a given cohort into projected absence and productivity loss. Executive reporting packages both into a readout your board and finance team can follow without wading through raw survey data.

Stage 1 creates the evidence base for everything downstream. Once you know that musculoskeletal risk clusters in three operational sites and mental health risk clusters in two office functions, you can direct Prevent and Escalate at those exact pockets. Every pound spent downstream is justified by the diagnostic, which is why Identify runs first and why the other two stages are only as good as the map it produces.

Stage 2 — Prevent: deploying the prevention layer

Prevent takes the risk map from Stage 1 and deploys self-management content to the cohorts that need it, not to everyone by default. Generic wellbeing content sent workforce-wide gets ignored because most of it does not apply to most people. Content aimed at a cohort the diagnostic has already flagged lands differently, because it speaks to a problem that group is actually carrying.

Targeting is what makes prevention work at scale. If the assessment shows musculoskeletal risk concentrated in a manual-handling team, that team receives movement, posture, and pain-management content built for their specific exposure. If a cohort shows early signs of burnout, they receive sleep, stress, and workload-recovery content instead. The diagnostic decides who gets what, so the prevention layer reaches at-risk employees before their risk turns into absence.

Prevent is deliberately scoped as one stage in the model rather than a full wellbeing library dropped on your intranet. Prevention only pays off when it is pointed at the right people, and the WRA is what tells you who those people are.

Stage 3 — Escalate: routing into existing pathways

Escalate routes higher-risk cases into the support you already pay for, rather than standing up a new parallel service. When the diagnostic identifies an individual or cohort whose risk sits beyond what self-management content can address, the model directs them into your existing EAP, occupational health provision, or MSK and physiotherapy pathways. Champion Health does not replace those services. We tell you which employees should be using them and when.

Most organisations already carry meaningful spend on these benefits, and most of that spend underperforms because the right people never reach it in time. The WRA fixes the timing and the targeting. It sends the employees who need clinical or specialist support toward the exact provision that fits their risk, before absence forces the issue.

The model is designed to complement providers such as Vitality, Health Assured, and Optima Health rather than compete with them, though the exact fit depends on how each organisation has configured its existing benefits. Those providers deliver the treatment and clinical support. The WRA sits upstream, generating the risk intelligence that decides who to send there. An EAP works far harder when the referrals reaching it are driven by data rather than by an employee happening to remember the benefit exists, and that is the role Escalate plays.

Who the Workforce Health Risk Assessment is built for

The Workforce Health Risk Assessment is built for organisations with 1,000 or more employees where physical and mental health risk sits across a large, distributed workforce. Primary sectors are Utilities and Energy, Transport and Infrastructure, Telecommunications, Manufacturing, Financial Services, Healthcare, and NHS Trusts. These are workforces where absence carries direct operational cost, where musculoskeletal and mental health pressure concentrate in specific roles, and where existing wellbeing spend often runs without any cohort-level view of where risk actually sits.

If your organisation employs between 500 and 1,000 people, the assessment still fits. At that size you have enough cohorts to segment meaningfully and enough absence cost to justify targeting it. The diagnostic works the same way. The main difference is scale, not method.

The buyers who get the most from this are HR Directors and People Leaders who already own a wellbeing budget and need to defend how it gets spent. If you are answering to a board about absence cost, EAP utilisation, or occupational health referrals, the assessment gives you an evidence base rather than an anecdote.

If you run a smaller organisation, a single-site team, or you are looking for an individual wellbeing app rather than a workforce diagnostic, this is not the right starting point. The assessment is designed for the complexity that comes with size.

What's included in the 90-day engagement

The 90-day engagement covers your entire workforce, not a sample or a volunteer group. Every employee is invited to complete the risk assessment, which measures mental health and musculoskeletal risk factors alongside the drivers behind them, including sleep, financial pressure, workload, and physical activity.

Cohort analysis segments those results by the dimensions that matter to you. You see risk broken down by department, site, job role, age band, and tenure, so you can find exactly where risk concentrates rather than reading a single organisation-wide average that hides the pockets that need attention.

Reporting arrives in two formats. Cohort-level heatmaps show which parts of the business carry the highest concentration of mental health and MSK risk, and financial impact modelling translates that risk into a projected cost of absence and lost productivity. Both are built to be read by people who do not spend their days in wellbeing data.

The engagement ends with an executive readout. A member of the Champion Health team walks your leadership through the findings, the financial modelling, and a clear set of recommended actions ranked by where they will reduce cost and absence fastest.

After day 90, you hold an evidence base you can act on immediately. You know which cohorts to prioritise, what is driving their risk, and where your existing wellbeing spend will do the most good. Decisions that previously rested on absence figures and instinct now rest on a mapped, costed picture of workforce risk.

How this compares to absence-tracking and sickness-data platforms

Absence-tracking platforms record what already happened. A system like GoodShape logs each absence event, categorises the reason, and shows how many days an organisation lost last quarter. GoodShape has real operational value for managing live cases and meeting reporting duties. Its limit is timing. Every figure describes a person who is already off work, so the intervention window has closed by the time the number appears on a dashboard.

The Workforce Health Risk Assessment works in the opposite direction. Instead of counting incidents after they occur, it models where risk is concentrating by cohort before those incidents turn into absence. You see which teams, sites, or job families carry rising mental health and musculoskeletal risk while people are still at their desks, not once they have left them.

Working ahead of incidents changes what you can do with the information. An absence report tells you a team lost days last year, but not why, which pressure produced it, or where the same pattern is building next. The WRA answers those questions by tying risk signals to cohorts and to the financial impact each one carries, so you can act on a forecast rather than a post-mortem.

Absence data still belongs in the picture as one input among several. On its own it explains the cost of workforce risk without explaining its cause, and cause is what determines where your prevention and clinical spend should go.

Book a Workforce Health Risk Assessment consultation

Book a Workforce Health Risk Assessment consultation to see where risk concentrates across your workforce and what it costs you before absence escalates.

In the consultation, the Champion Health team will scope your organisation's size, sectors, and existing wellbeing provision, then confirm the 90-day timeline and the executive outputs you receive. You leave with a clear view of what the assessment covers, how findings route into your current EAP, occupational health, and MSK pathways, and the value you can act on from day 90.

Frequently asked questions

What is a Workforce Health Risk Assessment? A 90-day diagnostic that maps where mental health and musculoskeletal risk concentrates across a workforce, by cohort, and puts a cost on it through financial impact modelling and executive reporting.

How is it different from absence-tracking software? Absence-tracking tools record days already lost. The Workforce Health Risk Assessment models where risk is building before it turns into absence, so action can be targeted ahead of the event rather than after it.

Who is the assessment built for? HR Directors and People Leaders at UK organisations with 1,000 or more employees, primarily in Utilities and Energy, Transport and Infrastructure, Telecommunications, Manufacturing, Financial Services, Healthcare, and NHS Trusts. Organisations with 500 to 1,000 employees are also a strong fit.

Does it replace an EAP or occupational health provision? No. It sits upstream of those services and directs existing spend toward the employees and cohorts most likely to need it.

Citations

[^1]: CIPD, Health and wellbeing at work 2025; HSE, Working days lost in Great Britain