Following Dame Carol Black’s review of Britain’s working-age population, a study into work-related health has been launched.

The £320,000 project – funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), proposes to discover what organisations can do to manage work-related health issues.

Surveying more than 40 small, medium and large scale organisations over two and a half years, it will examine how the work environment and work systems affect workers lives.

Researchers hope the results of the study will have a long-term impact on tackling work-related health and lead to greater employee commitment, staff performance, satisfaction and productivity.

HSE figures for 2007/08 revealed that more than 2 million people were suffering from an illness they believed was caused, or made worse by their current or past work, while 28 million days were lost to work-related ill health.

Dame Carol Black’s review, in March last year, found the annual economic cost of working days lost was more than £100bn a year – equivalent to the annual running costs of the NHS.