The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has been asked by the Department of Health to develop public health guidance on workplace policy and management practices to improve the health and wellbeing of employees. The final scope for this guidance can be found on the guidance in development page.

To inform the development of the guidance, NICE is commissioning a number of reviews of the evidence, a cost effectiveness review and an economic analysis. The reviews focus on organisational culture and context, and its role in promoting the wellbeing of employees through proactive and supportive leadership style and management practices and the related barriers and facilitators, specifically:

a)  Organisational structure and policies in relation to workplace health

b)  Role of occupational health services.

c)  Policies on the recruitment, selection, training and development of line managers.

d) Promoting a management style that encourages participation, staff engagement, good working relationships, delegation, constructive feedback, workload planning, problem solving, managing conflict, mentoring and coaching.

e) Managers’ knowledge and application of workplace law, policies and best practice to develop, support and improve healthy workplaces (including the physical work environment) and workforce health.

f) Supporting and training line managers in:

• understanding and promoting health and wellbeing, and emotional resilience
• understanding the psychosocial impacts of different management styles
• developing communication skills, including the ability to assess and control the emotions of both line managers and employees
• preventing and managing conflict, including bullying, equity and fairness
• developing the understanding and the skills to implement policies or prevent and reduce stress at work
• managing workloads including flexible working, maternity and other types of leave, such as bereavement leave
• managing change and performance
• finding sources of help and support, for example employee assistance programmes and occupational health services
• identifying potential risks and hazards and supporting people who have, or are at risk of developing, health conditions
• managing sickness absence and return to work.

g)  Motivation of employees by line managers, and the provision of training and support to employees to develop their performance, where appropriate, their own health and wellbeing and job satisfaction. This support may also include workload management, and adjusting or adapting working practices, patterns or job roles.

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

• What is the role of the organisational culture and context in supporting line managers, and in turn their employees? What is the role of organisational policy and processes?
• How can line managers promote the health and wellbeing of employees? Which interventions or policies are most effective and cost effective?
• Are there actions or activities by line managers that discourage or hinder the health and wellbeing of employees? How can line managers support and motivate employees?
• How can line managers be best equipped to identify any employee health and wellbeing issues? How can line managers identify and support distressed employees?
• How can high-level management promote a positive line management style that is open and fair, that rewards and promotes positive behaviours and that promotes good working conditions and employee health and wellbeing?
• How can line managers be best supported and provided with good line management themselves?
• What are the barriers and facilitators to implementing interventions or policies to promote the role of line managers in improving employee health and wellbeing?
• Which types of support and training for line managers are effective and cost effective?
• What is the role and value of occupational health services in supporting line managers? Are these services effective and cost effective?
• What is the business or economic case for strengthening the role of line managers in promoting the health and wellbeing of employees? We are interested in a broad range of different types of evidence. This includes, quantitative or qualitative research, including epidemiological/large scale cohort studies, published or unpublished.

The following outcomes measures are of interest:

• Organisation: employee health and wellbeing and engagement; levels of employee recruitment and retention; absenteeism; presenteeism; organisational measures of productivity; uptake of support services; back-to-work rates.
• Line managers: employee engagement, knowledge, awareness and implementation of workplace law, policies and best practice; identification of risks, hazards and causes of health conditions and accidents; levels of health awareness; awareness, availability and use of training and support services; workplace performance; stress and job satisfaction.
• Employee: individual levels of health and wellbeing, motivation, workplace performance, stress and job satisfaction; engagement with employer; awareness, availability and use of training and support services.

Types of evidence

NICE is interested in a range of evidence types which may help to inform these two reviews and the economic modelling. This includes data from:  

• Experimental trials of the effectiveness or cost effectiveness of relevant interventions including randomized and non-randomized trials, or before and after studies,
• Observational studies of relevant interventions for example,  case control or cohort studies,
• Qualitative survey and other observational studies of barriers and facilitators to delivering such interventions or the views, perceptions and beliefs of those using and delivering such services. This includes surveys, interviews, reports of focus groups, and process and outcome evaluations of local projects and interventions
• 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.
• 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. 

Submitting evidence

In terms of published material, we are interested in identifying studies that have been published since 2000 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 2000, 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 see Annex 1 and refer to section 4.4 of the Process Manual 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 this form by 5pm on 14th October 2013 to WorkplaceLineManagement@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 this form to send in details of any relevant evidence by 5pm on 14th October 2013 to WorkplaceLineManagement@nice.org.uk  

Paper copies can be sent to:

Denise Jarrett
Co-ordinator for Centre for Public Health
National Institute for Health and Care
Level 1A
City Tower
Piccadilly Plaza
Manchester
M1 4BT

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

Annex 1

The use of ‘commercial in confidence’ and ‘academic in confidence’ data in the development of public health guidance: statement of principle

1. NICE is under obligations of transparency and fairness to all stakeholders, among others, in the development of its guidance

2. The rights of the owners of the data provided to NICE must be respected.

Definitions

3. Commercial in confidence information is information provided in confidence relating to the commercial interests of the owner of the information.

4. Academic in confidence information is information provided in confidence in circumstances where disclosure could prejudice future publication of the information in a scientific publication. It would be expected that any information marked as academic in confidence is going to be published at some stage and that a timeline for publication can be given.

Submission of data

6. The amount of information submitted on an ‘in confidence’ basis should be kept to a minimum. The whole submission should not be marked as confidential. It is likely to be unacceptable to mark complete sections as confidential.

7. Only information that is genuinely confidential, such as actual numbers, should be marked as in confidence. NICE will only treat information in confidence if the material is in fact either ‘commercial in confidence’ or ‘academic in confidence’.

8. When marking data as confidential, organisations should indicate if this status will apply at the time NICE anticipates publication/presentation of the data. The last opportunity for organisations to review the confidential status of information is during the consultation on the draft guidance and its supporting evidence.

9. For all unpublished data submitted as ‘academic or commercial in confidence’ the minimum that should be made available for release is that which normally would be included in a CONSORT (or PRISMA) compliant abstract (http://www.consort-statement.org/?o=1011) and be suitable for public disclosure. An equivalent approach is required for all data and studies which underpin and are included in economic analyses and models, and for the economic model included in the submission if that is marked ‘academic or commercial in confidence’.

Presentation of data at PHAC meetings

10. Data that contributes to evidence of effectiveness and cost effectiveness can be presented to a PHAC meeting provided the information is factual, accurate and not misleading.

11. ‘Academic in confidence’ information may be presented during PHAC meetings, even if the meetings are conducted in public. However, the data owner retains the right to make a final decision in relation to the release of confidential information into the public domain

12. The data owner retains the responsibility for the release of ‘commercial in confidence’ data into the public domain. With the exception of presentation of data at PHAC meetings, the data owner retains the right to make a final decision in relation to the release of confidential information into the public domain.

Publication of data

13. In circumstances where NICE wishes to publish data regarded by the data owner as academic or commercial in confidence, both NICE and the data owner will negotiate in good faith to seek to find a mutually acceptable solution, recognising the need for NICE to support its recommendations with evidence and the data owner’s right to publication. However the data owner retains the right to make a final decision in relation to the release of confidential information into the public domain.

Economic models

14. NICE will normally disclose in full economic models provided by manufacturers/sponsors to NICE as part of a submission of evidence, together with the data on which such models are based. Exceptionally, data within a model can be treated as confidential if they contain or make practical the reverse engineering of confidential data inputs which are credibly specified as confidential by the organisation or company.

15. Model structures will not be accepted as confidential information, and by submitting a model the manufacturers/sponsor will be taken to have agreed that the model structure may be put into the public domain.

Disclosure of confidential data

16. NICE is challenged that confidential information it has received should be released in the interests of fairness, during the guidance development process or otherwise, data owners must on request promptly reconsider whether it is in fact necessary to maintain confidentiality.

17. NICE does not intend to make repeated requests for a prima facie tenable claim of confidentiality to be abandoned or modified, and it will accept the data owner’s judgement in that regard.

18. NICE cannot ‘second guess’ the motives of a data owner. If a data owner would not agree to the specific request for disclosure made, but would agree to some more limited disclosure (for example to a “confidentiality club”,) then it is asked itself to suggest the disclosure it would find acceptable, rather than wait for NICE to propose the specific formula it may have in mind and discuss and agree a potential solution with NICE.

19. If disclosure is not possible the data owner must be prepared to assert publicly that the information is considered to be confidential, and must submit evidence giving the justification for maintaining confidentiality in defence of NICE's maintenance of that confidentiality. In the absence of any such assertion and evidence, NICE shall be entitled to conclude that the information is no longer confidential.