When statistics miss the person: Rethinking men’s health at work

Bluecrest’s chief growth officer Jon Darby provides an expert view on how to reframe our attitude to men's health in the workplace.

In public health, statistics play an essential role. They shape national policy, guide funding decisions and help healthcare systems manage risk at scale. But in the workplace, health is experienced one person at a time. And it is here that statistics can sometimes miss what matters most.

Population policy versus the workplace reality

The ongoing debate around prostate cancer screening in the UK is a useful example. National guidance continues to stop short of recommending routine PSA screening for all men, citing concerns around overdiagnosis and unnecessary treatment.

From a population perspective, that position is understandable. Screening millions of asymptomatic people inevitably brings trade-offs, and policy must balance benefit against harm across society as a whole.

For employers, however, the lens is different. Organisations are not managing population averages; they are supporting real people, real risks and real outcomes. When illness is detected late, the impact is rarely confined to the healthcare system alone.

It shows up in prolonged absence, reduced productivity, rising benefit costs and the loss of experienced employees at a time when many workforces are ageing and skills are increasingly hard to replace.

Men’s health and the problem of late diagnosis

Prostate cancer remains the most common cancer in men in the UK, affecting around one in eight during their lifetime.

Over the past few years, Bluecrest has carried out 170,000 prostate cancer risk checks, with 8,000 men finding elevated prostate specific antigen (PSA) levels. That's about 4.7% of all assessments and 8,000 opportunities for early action.

Despite this, we know that men are still significantly less likely than women to engage with preventative healthcare.

Symptoms are often ignored or normalised, and health checks are delayed until something feels wrong. By then, options can be more limited, treatment more invasive and recovery more disruptive to working life.

This gap between policy intent and lived experience highlights a broader issue in how men’s health is approached at work. Too often, health support is framed as reactive rather than preventative, focused on managing illness once it becomes visible rather than identifying risk while employees are still feeling well.

Why one-off numbers aren’t the answer

A major part of the problem lies in how screening itself is perceived. PSA testing, for example, is frequently reduced to a single number, interpreted in isolation and assumed to lead directly to intervention. In reality, modern clinical practice has moved on.

Today, PSA is increasingly understood as part of a longer-term picture, where changes over time are more informative than any one result. Abnormal readings are more likely to lead to further imaging and monitoring rather than immediate treatment, and active surveillance is now a well-established approach for low-risk cases.

This shift mirrors what effective workplace health strategies are beginning to recognise. One-off measurements provide reassurance in the moment, but they rarely offer insight into emerging risk. What matters is the ability to establish a personal baseline and observe trends as they evolve. Without that context, change is easy to miss.

Dr Peter King-Lewis, Chairman of Bluecrest Wellness’s Medical Advisory board, personal story shows precisely why a one-off PSA reading can be misleading.

For nearly 20 years his PSA was stable, giving him a clear personal baseline. When it first rose, the number itself was not extreme, but the change was and he was subsequently diagnosed with a low-grade and treatable prostate cancer, the decision was not immediate surgery, but active surveillance.

A second rise years later confirmed that something was evolving, triggering further investigation and timely surgery before the disease could spread. Following successful treatment, he has an excellent prognosis.

This demonstrates where health intelligence can play a valuable role when used appropriately. Services such as Bluecrest’s health assessments are designed to provide employees with a broader picture of their health, capturing multiple markers over time rather than delivering a single pass-or-fail result.

When repeated, this kind of assessment supports pattern recognition, enabling individuals to notice when something shifts and seek advice earlier. The value lies not in the test itself, but in the continuity - patterns over time can save lives.

From health policy to workplace impact

For employers, this approach reframes prevention. It is not about encouraging unnecessary intervention or medicalising healthy people.

It is about reducing the likelihood that conditions are only discovered once they begin to interfere with work and quality of life.

And late diagnosis is not just a clinical issue - it is a business one. Longer absences, more complex treatment pathways and increased claims costs all follow when problems are identified too late.

Cancer-related absence alone is estimated to have cost UK businesses around £1.6 billion in 2024, with the average employee off work for approximately 15 weeks during their cancer journey.

There is also a cultural dimension. Many men disengage from health support because it feels binary - either you are fine, or you are ill. Preventative monitoring offers a third option, one that normalises awareness without alarm.

When employers support this mindset, they help shift men’s health from something to be avoided to something that is simply part of staying well at work.

As organisations look ahead to 2026, the challenge is not whether men’s health belongs on the workforce agenda. It is whether health strategies are sophisticated enough to reflect how risk actually develops over time.

National statistics will always inform policy, but workplaces are built around individuals, each with their own baseline, history and future working life.

When statistics miss the person, opportunities for early action are lost. When it comes to men’s health, those missed opportunities can carry a high price.