Hot on the heels of Smoke Free Liverpool, another initiative of Liverpool Primary Care Trust and the city's public health campaign groups is being rolled out in the run up to Christmas 2007.

Clarity, is a campaign aimed at combating alcohol misuse in work and offer help to employers in developing workplace alcohol policies for their employees. 

Health@Work, in partnership with the Liverpool Primary Care Trust, has launched the Clarity Workplace Alcohol Campaign starting with the City centre business community and extending out to cover most of Liverpool's businesses.

Health@Work say on their website, "Our aim is not to stop people drinking alcohol completely. It is to raise awareness of sensible drinking. We wish to help people make the right decisions about their consumption levels by helping to understand consumption levels and the potential health impact."

The Clarity section of their website says: " Figures based on Cabinet Office statistics 2003 show that work-related alcohol misuse costs the economy up to £6.4 billion a year, with 17 million working days lost annually in England alone, due to alcohol related sickness. We want to combat alcohol misuse in work and offer help to employers in developing workplace alcohol policies for their employees." 

Frances Molloy, Executive Director of Health@Work said: "Alcohol campaigns often focus on aspects like binge drinking and younger people out on the town, but the business and commerce sector could have a real impact on raising awareness of sensible drinking and that is why the Clarity Campaign has been introduced."

Keith Gorman, Programme Manager of the campaign added: "We have visited over 2,000 businesses in the last month and sent out information to a further 4,000 - the response has been very positive. Our aim is to give employers the tools to implement good supportive alcohol policies. We want employees with drink problems to be confident they can seek support from their employer without worrying about dismissal. We are currently developing materials aimed at trade union representatives. This will provide information on what a good alcohol policy should contain and what support employers should be offering around sensible drinking."

Health@Work, are visiting many businesses over the next few months to hand out ‘miniature campaign bags’ which includes all information required to empower employers to develop alcohol policies for their staff and help educate them into being aware of the health issues around alcohol.

The aim is to hand out the small campaign bags containing leaflets, alcohol policy templates and other information on a cd-rom; and even a calculator showing exactly the number of units of alcohol in different sorts of beverages so that people can work out just how much alcohol they are consuming.

The work being done now is part of Liverpool Primary Care Trust's ‘Alcohol Harm Reduction Strategy’. Health@Work has been commissioned to help deliver the Business & Commerce strand of the 2007 – 2010 strategy.

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