The Takeaway: A Q&A With Rainer Hepberger and Fabio Riva on the Occupational Health Market
How would you define occupational health (OH)?
Essentially, it covers safeguarding and enhancing the well-being of employees in their work environment—not only the prevention of work-related injuries and illnesses but also the active management of employee absence and sickness and the implementation of compliance and safety standards. By integrating primary care, mental health services, and technology-enabled solutions, OH aims to enhance employee health outcomes and overall productivity.
Companies that invest in comprehensive, tech-enabled OH programs can gain a competitive edge by improving employee health outcomes and operational efficiency.
What is driving the transformative shift that we are seeing in the OH industry?
Regulation is playing an important role.
Regulatory frameworks generally set health and safety standards, including mandatory audits, risk assessments, and injury reporting. These rules ensure workplaces are safe and protect employees. While these frameworks are often many decades old, recent incentives like those from the U.K. government’s Spring Budget combined with increasing enforcement, especially among SMEs, are driving growth in the OH market.
Other than compliance with this mandatory OH framework, we do see companies investing more and more in the discretionary part of OH (e.g., prevention) as employers experience a strong increase in psychosomatic and mental illness as well as musculoskeletal disorders among their workforce, which causes a rise in absence and sickness days.
Lastly, professionalization and consolidation of the OH provider landscape have significantly increased access to and quality of OH services.
How about technology?
Technology is really shaking up how OH services are delivered, making them more efficient and accessible. On the B2C side, we see digital-first providers with software and apps (e.g., employee assistance programmes and mental health support) but also hardware, such as Latus Health’s Yodha platform. On the backend side, integration into existing employer IT systems is becoming more important as it drives customer lock-in. Examples include access to HR data and vice versa, offering OH dashboards to employees where data is aggregated.
Are there opportunities for OH services firms to expand internationally?
Absolutely, and there are several successful examples. However, international expansion requires careful assessment of regulatory landscapes and replicability of existing services and business models. Most past international expansions have been to neighboring countries (e.g., Nordics, Iberia, and Benelux) due to similar OH systems, proximity to existing operations (clustering), or simply cultural fit.
So, what’s the Takeaway?
The industry is at a transformative juncture where regulatory requirements, demographic developments, a shortage of qualified practitioners, and technological advancements are driving significant changes. This is accelerated by growing private equity interest in the highly fragmented OH industry, as seen in recent platform acquisitions in the Netherlands, Germany, and the U.K. The transformation and consolidation of the OH industry in Europe has just begun!
