Post-Covid | Are employees with Long Covid receiving the support they need?

By Tracey Ward, Head of Business Development & Marketing at Generali UK Employee Benefits

Despite the complexity of Long Covid, there’s much that can be done to help support employees, ideally at an early stage. This includes expertise ranging from Occupational Health, Vocational Rehabilitation and specialist Long Covid support programmes via group income protection, to flexible working and other reasonable adjustments, where appropriate.

But it seems that not everyone is receiving the support they need. Is the answer to make it mandatory for employers to provide support?

In a report published earlier this year, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) suggested many employees with Long Covid were receiving unfair treatment at work. They said this ranged from harassment to being disbelieved about their symptoms, according to two thirds of Long Covid sufferers surveyed. One in seven respondents even claimed they’d lost their job, according to the TUC. This comes against the backdrop of just over 2 million people who have now had self-reported Long Covid for at least a year and up to two years in some cases – according to latest data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS).