"Businesses need to prioritise manifesting an environment where their employees feel empowered to tackle any health issues they face."
- Ann Stewart, Director of Dental Insurance at Bupa
Of those surveyed (2,001), only 13% of 18-34-year-olds feel they’re better informed about their dental over mental health. Bupa believes this knowledge gap is costing businesses in the UK thousands of pounds every year. Notably, 85% didn’t think there was any connection between oral and mental health, only 12% knew oral health was connected to panic attacks, and just 7% understood the links to bipolar disorder.
Furthermore, Bupa found there’s low public awareness of the links to serious physical conditions as well as mental health with only 53% recognising the link to mouth cancer, followed by diabetes (25%), and heart illness (14%).
The private healthcare provider stressed that this lack of awareness is having a direct impact on the workplace. 37% of employees have needed to take time off work due to oral pain – that’s before accounting for absence due to illness that could’ve been detected earlier by visiting a dentist. On average, workers miss 6.5 hours each time they call in sick due to dental pain.
Yet only 15% of staff have dental insurance via their employer while 10% were unaware, when asked, if dental was included in their benefits package. This figure reduced to 10% of employees aged 45-54 years old and 7% amongst those aged 55 or above. Bupa found that improvement to employee benefits would make 34% of staff feel more valued, while 24% said it would make them more motivated and/or loyal to their employer.
To educate the public about the links between their oral and wider health, Bupa has launched its ‘The Great Unexplored’ campaign, giving people the opportunity to take a quiz to find out how much they know.
“Employers and people teams need to balance rewarding and retaining the best talent with their business’ broader goals. Great progress has been made in recognising the central role mental health plays in overall wellbeing and consequently how we perform at work, but attitudes towards dental care have been slower to catch up,” highlighted Ann Stewart, Director of Dental Insurance at Bupa.
She said: “Not only do oral health issues cost people time at work, but it can also be an indicator of broader health problems. Workplaces have a growing responsibility in the UK to encourage workers to prioritise their wellbeing and help remove any barriers that might be in place.
“Businesses need to prioritise manifesting an environment where their employees feel empowered to tackle any health issues they face. This can be done by investing in educational opportunities, introducing policies that make it easier for people to make time for appointments, or even investing in health benefits packages,” Ann concluded.
