Tackle Duvet Days With These Employer Duty-of-Care Guidelines, Expert Tells No. 10

Tackle Duvet Days With These Employer Duty-of-Care Guidelines, Expert Tells No. 10 Downing Street

An Occupational Psychologist and former NHS whistleblower joined fellow board members of the Policy Liaison Group on Workplace Wellbeing (PLG) at No. 10 Downing Street, to deliver newly published guidelines on employer duty of care.

Maria Paviour, a founding board member of the PLG, attended the Parliament launch of Good Work, Good Health, Good Growth: The UK's Duty of Care Guidelines for Policymakers and Parliamentarians on Tuesday 1st September.

The guidelines, developed over two years by PLG board members working alongside academics, employers and workplace experts, set out an evidence-based framework for embedding employer duty of care into national policy. The launch brought the guidelines to the attention of Prime Minister Andy Burnham, along with a number of MPs and other high-profile attendees, and explored how improving workforce wellbeing can support public health, economic participation, productivity and growth across the UK.

Paviour's own work centres on tackling avoidable workplace absence, often referred to as 'Duvet Days', through First Day Matters™, a single neuroscience-based session designed to help employees re-engage with work before short-term absence develops into weeks or months off sick.

Her most recent research, The Upside-Down People System, published in partnership with the PLG in June 2026, examined patterns of absence and engagement across UK organisations.

Commenting on the launch, Paviour said:

"Being a founding member of the PLG has taken real commitment, time and personal investment, but it has been enormously worthwhile. I believe passionately that this work matters, and perhaps never more than now. The Duty of Care Guidelines give us a new language and a clearer way of thinking about how we create workplaces in which people can genuinely thrive and perform.
"Businesses only work if people do. Making people anything less than our primary focus is a bit like trying to run a car while forgetting it needs fuel, except rather more serious, because, spoiler alert, people are not machines.
"So I was genuinely delighted to join my PLG colleagues at No. 10 to hand in the Guidelines. It felt like an important moment after a great deal of hard work, and also an opportunity to inject a little fun into proceedings. Wellbeing is serious. That doesn't mean we always have to take ourselves quite so seriously."

Good Work, Good Health, Good Growth: The UK's Duty of Care Guidelines for Policymakers and Parliamentarians is available via the PLG website.