"If you’re ill and you’re running a business, you need to find out what the problem is"

Cheryl Hunt, Operations Director of management consultancy SeH Limited, is very firm about the Managing Director making time for holidays. “At the beginning of the year, I’ll grab his diary and put aside some time,” she says. “Otherwise he’ll just book it all up. He’s a workaholic – he’d work all year round if he could.”

This approach is perhaps more understandable when you consider that Cheryl is married to the MD. Together Cheryl and Steve Hunt run this small Southampton-based company that advises organisations on putting in place management systems covering quality, environment and health and safety. SeH Limited has about 200 clients on its books, some of whom have been customers since Steve started the company in 1990. Apart from Steve and Cheryl, the company has two employees. “The business is very much intertwined with us personally,” says Cheryl.

Steve and his team are constantly on the road visiting clients, so Cheryl has to carefully manage diaries, plan holidays and – where possible – organise healthcare. She and Steve swapped from a personal policy to Bupa Select when the company started.

“If you’re running your own business, you can’t be waiting around for appointments. If you have the ability and it’s not an emergency situation, it is so much better to be able to plan medical treatment,” Cheryl says.

“I had a problem back in 2013 and I was taken as an emergency to a local NHS hospital. After a few days, however, I used my Bupa cover to transfer to Spire Southampton Hospital, a private hospital. I saw a consultant within a couple of days. I had numerous scans and tests done and I was operated on all within a couple of weeks. For us, that’s the benefit of Bupa membership. If you’re ill and you’re running a business, you need to find out what the problem is and how they’re going to treat it because you need to be back working. It’s as simple as that.”

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