The goal of a company’s health plan should reach beyond providing health and medical coverage for employees when they are sick. From inception, an integral element of a workplace health plan should be preventive care and wellness. While medical care and pharmaceutical costs comprise only 30 percent of a company’s healthcare spend, 70 percent is spent on health-related costs associated with worker productivity. This undeniably high percentage accounts for both absenteeism and presenteeism, the term used when the employee is physically present but is performing at a suboptimal level. In fact, health-related presenteeism has a greater negative impact on productivity than absenteeism.
According to a Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine study, (http://www.vbhealth.org/wp-content/uploads/JOEM-article-4-09-Final.pdf), for every dollar spent on medical and pharmaceutical costs nearly two-and-half times that amount results in health-related productivity costs. And the top health conditions driving total medical and health-related productivity costs are depression, obesity, arthritis, back and neck pain and anxiety. Clearly these conditions are treatable from a “whole person” integrated worksite personal health program.
The results speak for themselves. A National Business Group on Health/Watson Wyatt “Stay at Work” study (http://www.easna.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/WatsonWyattStayingatWorkSurvey.pdf) shows that companies with highly effective health and productivity programs yield 20 percent more revenue per employee, demonstrate more than 16% higher market value and deliver 57% higher shareholder returns than companies that don’t employ such programs.
The undeniable business fact is that management of health risks can lead to a reduction in heath costs. Adopting a comprehensive health coverage plan for employees can have significant positive economic implications for a company in the long run.
In order for employers to avoid incurring inflated expenses associated with worker health and productivity, they need to develop and implement sustainable healthcare strategies that ultimately affect the bottom line but also help attract and retain a high performing workforce.
At PinnacleCare, we understand the importance and value of maintaining happy and healthy employees. Taking simple steps to ensure peak performance from your employees such as affording them comprehensive health benefits will have significant returns.