We often hear from managers and leaders that they don’t want to interfere in their employees’ lifestyle habits and health, that it is up to each individual to take responsibility for their own health. But the benefits of getting involved in these issues as an employer are many and substantial. A healthy and thriving organization attracts top talent, is more profitable, and has low staff turnover.
It is true that personal responsibility is often required to create lifestyle changes, but there is a great deal that both managers and leaders can do to make it easier and to inspire healthy behaviors in the workplace. One should also be aware that poor health is currently a major brake on profitability.
What does poor health cost? In the article “Arbetsgivarnas svarta hälsohål” from 2014 (Lund, Dagens Industri 29/3 2014), the costs of ill health at the 100 largest companies in Sweden are described as amounting to as much as SEK 74 billion annually. According to the article, health-related costs swallowed as much as 27% of the companies’ wage costs or 36% of their profits. Most people are aware that sick leave is expensive, but according to the article, sick leave accounts for only 8% of the total costs. Instead, it turns out that a large share is caused by employees’ poor physical fitness, which in turn affects productivity and work capacity. Sleep disorders account for about 12%, stress for about 5%, and harmful use of alcohol and tobacco for about 14%. Already in 2014, employee ill health was a major challenge, and unfortunately the negative trend has continued in the same direction. Today, about 45% of the working-age population has dangerously poor fitness and insufficient oxygen uptake capacity to manage working 8 hours a day. In addition, almost 50% are overweight or obese, and stress-related sickness absence has increased by about 234% over the past 10 years. In many white-collar companies, almost no sick leave is reported today. Instead, there is hidden sickness presence, as many employees choose to work despite being ill (often from home). This is not sustainable in the long term and risks costing employers even more over time.
How do we traditionally work with health in the workplace? It is widely accepted that prevention is the most important factor for a sustainable working life. Despite this, most Swedish and international companies work reactively with ill health. Many health initiatives come too late, when an employee has already become ill or injured. Preventive health efforts largely consist of a wellness allowance that is not used, or a health check that only identifies illnesses that have already developed. Another challenge is that companies’ health initiatives are often aimed only at people who are already healthy, instead of those who are most in need of change. To reach more people, we must broaden preventive health work to include more than just physical activity and bring it down to a level that includes more people and has the primary goal of improving health for all employees, including those who are not in the habit of getting involved.
