Accounting for employee health: The productivity cost of leading health risks

Abstract

Employee health plays a vital role in the profitability, productivity, and safety outcomes of an organisation. For modifiable health risks and chronic conditions, ailments that affected cognition resulted in the highest financial burden (ie, stress and migraine headaches). SO WHAT?: These findings make a strong financial and business case for the integration of preventative health and safety initiatives, with particular emphasis on modifiable health risk behaviours.

Employee Stress, Reduced Productivity, and Interest in a Workplace Health Program: A Case Study from the Australian Mining Industry

“…Demographic and employment characteristic measures replicated government survey and corporate health survey items [4,24]. Consistent with previous research [4], stress was measured by the item “How much of the time in the past four weeks did you feel stressed while at work?” Response options included: none of the time; a little of the time; some of the time; a good bit of the time; most of the time; and all of the time. Participants were classified as stressed if they selected: some of the time; a good bit of the time; most of the time; or all of the time.…”

“…The Worker Productivity and Activity Impairment—General Health (WPAI:GH) questionnaire [27] items including hours worked, work absenteeism (i.e., work time missed due to health), and work presenteeism (i.e., impairment while working due to health) were replicated with minor amendments. Consistent with previous research using a shift work mining sample [4], the original seven-day measurement period was extended to a four-week period to minimize the impact of acute illnesses and shift work rosters to read, “During the past four weeks, how many days did you miss from work because of your health problems?”…”

“…All analyses were conducted using the IBM software package SPSS version 21. Consistent with previous research [4], the current study followed the protocol outlined by Lenneman et al [29]. However, it was not necessary to calculate ‘excess costs’ as the study was limited to a subset of employees who reported experiencing stress at work ( n = 375).…”

“…High economic costs of stress related absenteeism and presenteeism have been reported in the Australian mining sector. For example, in a Queensland mining company work-related stress accounted for the highest financial burden (compared across 25 medical conditions) [4]. Employees who reported experiencing stress at work were 19% less productive than employees who did not report experiencing stress [4].…”

“…For example, in a Queensland mining company work-related stress accounted for the highest financial burden (compared across 25 medical conditions) [4]. Employees who reported experiencing stress at work were 19% less productive than employees who did not report experiencing stress [4]. Furthermore, based on productive time lost calculations from Queensland and New South Wales mines it has been estimated that psychological distress has an annual economic cost of $153.8 million to the Australian coal mining industry, representing almost 9% of pre-tax operating profit [5].…”