The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has been asked by the Department of Health to develop guidance on workplace policies and approaches to promote and protect the health of older employees. The final scope for this guidance can be found on the guidance in development page.

To inform the development of the guidance, NICE has commissioned 3 reviews of the evidence and an economic analysis.

 We would like to receive details of evidence specifically addressing the questions set out below:

1. What are the most effective and cost-effective methods of protecting and promoting the health and wellbeing of older workers at both an individual and organisational level?


2. What are the most effective and cost-effective ways of helping older workers plan and prepare for retirement?  What supports, or prevents, implementation of these methods? 
   
   In particular:
   
   
• Workplace policies, pre-retirement planning, including financial planning and broader retirement issues; flexible or phased retirement or any workplace adjustments


3. What factors facilitate or constrain employers to enhance the wellbeing of older workers, to support them in continuing to work up to and beyond state pensionable age and affect the quality and outcomes of pre-retirement planning?
   In particular:
   
   
• What factors support or prevent employers taking action to support the health and wellbeing of older employees?
• What factors support or reduce the impact of interventions on organisational outcomes, perceptions of the interventions and on employee health and wellbeing?

Types of evidence

NICE is interested in a range of evidence types which may help to inform these reviews and any economic modelling. This includes published or unpublished data.

The following inclusion criteria will be applied to material submitted for all 3 questions:

Populations to be included

• All adults aged at least 50 in full or part-time employment, both paid and unpaid, self-employed people working in micro, small, medium and large organisations with an appointed line manager and volunteers
• All employers in the public, private and ‘not for profit’ sectors who employ at least one employee

Interventions and policies to be included

• Interventions intended to address the research question primarily involving or aimed at employees aged over 50
• Interventions addressing entire workforces where at least 51% of employees are aged over 50
• Interventions targeted at ‘older’ workers aged below 50 where the intervention has an impact on them at age 50 or above
• Interventions delivered by third party organisations commissioned by organisations to deliver these within the workplace

For questions 1 and 2 the following inclusion criteria will be applied to material submitted:

Locations to be included

• Developed/OECD countries, major European countries outside the EU, and European countries which acceded to the EU in or before 2004 (that is Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States).
• Workplace settings or community level interventions aimed at workers rather than general population

Study types

Experimental quantitative studies including:

• before and after studies
• non-randomised controlled studies (NRCS)
• randomised controlled trials (RCT)
• systematic reviews or meta-analyses

Observational quantitative studies:

• before-and-after studies
• cohort studies
• interrupted time studies

Economic studies

• Analyses of cost effectiveness, cost benefit, cost consequences, cost utility, return on investment, from an NHS perspective, a public sector perspective, an employer perspective and a societal perspective.

For question 3, the following inclusion criteria will be applied to material submitted:

Locations to be included

• Studies set in the UK, Australia and New Zealand.
• Workplace settings or community level interventions aimed at workers rather than general population

Study types

• Cross-sectional and qualitative studies
• Translational studies or data, i.e. studies which assess or data which shows the feasibility of rolling out programmes developed in an experimental context to an operational level in the community.  We are particularly interested in any impact this may have on effectiveness, cost effectiveness, acceptability and feasibility.   

We are particularly interested in evidence that may help to better promote equality of opportunity relating to age, disability, gender, gender identity, ethnicity, religion and belief, sexual orientation or socio-economic status. Subgroups that may be missed by conventional services are of particular interest.

If you have already submitted material in response to the first call for evidence, please do not resubmit the same material.

Submitting evidence

In terms of published material, we are interested in identifying studies that have been published since 2005 that relate to the questions outlined above. The studies may be published in journals, texts or monographs.

Due to copyright restrictions please only forward the details of references for papers published in peer reviewed or other press. Please note that we are no longer able to accept paper or electronic versions of evidence if it is published in the peer reviewed or other press.

In terms of unpublished material, we are interested in identifying unpublished manuscripts relating to research conducted since 2005, or any on-going research that is being conducted, and which relates to the research questions outlined above.

‘Academic in confidence’ or ‘commercial in confidence’ information

If you wish to submit relevant academic in confidence material i.e. written but not yet published, commercially sensitive information, unpublished information or research, please can you highlight which sections are confidential by using a highlighter pen on hardcopy or the highlighter function in Word. Please refer to section 5.4 of the Guidelines Manual (2014) for further information on submission of confidential material.

Please note that the following material is not eligible for consideration:

• Promotional material
• Unsubstantiated or non-evidence-based assertions of effectiveness
• Opinion/ discussion pieces

Forms with electronic attachments of published material (e.g. journal articles), or hard copies of published material. For copyright reasons, we cannot accept these copies. However, if you give us the full citation, we will obtain our own copy. Please include author/s, title, date, journal or publication details including volume and issue number and page numbers. We are able to accept attachments of unpublished reports, local reports / documents.

Instructions for Published material

Please send either full reference details (which are to include author/s, title, date, journal or publication details including volume and issue number and page numbers), - NOT a PDF/Word attachment or hard copy - using the stakeholder response for published material form by 5pm on 27 March 2015 to WorkplaceOlderEmployees@nice.org.uk .

Instructions for Unpublished material

If you are aware of trials/ongoing research relevant to our questions which are in progress please could you help us to identify that information by providing relevant information such as a link to a trial registered with the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (Clinical Trials), or with the US National Institutes of Health trials registry (http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/).

If you wish to submit academic in confidence material (i.e. written but not yet published) or commercial in confidence (i.e. internal documentation), please could you highlight which sections are confidential by using the highlighter function in Word.

Please use the stakeholder response for unpublished material form to send in details of any relevant evidence by 5pm on 27 March 2015 to WorkplaceOlderEmployees@nice.org.uk .

Paper copies can be sent to:
D Jarrett
Project Coordinator
National Institute for Health and Care Excellence
Level 1A
City Tower
Piccadilly Plaza
Manchester
M1 4BT

We look forward to receiving information and thank you in advance for your help.