Happy Companies Make Loyal Employees – Corporate Strategies for Physical and Mental Health; Fifth in a Series
Posted: August 1, 2017
From Chapter 7 in What Happy Companies Know: Ask not for whom the stress tolls, it tolls for thee. Each and every person in business runs the risk of a stress-induced collapse. As some people might give out after hiking 10 miles and other people might give out after 20 miles, some individuals may react to stress faster or fall to the ravages of stress sooner than others. Some people may go a good deal longer. But, if your business life is the equivalent of hiking 25 miles a day – or doing a series of exhausting sprints all day long, day in and day out, year in and year out – eventually you and your body will wear out.
Just as a person has a responsibility to prepare for a grueling hike, each individual in a company has the responsibility to train – quite literally – for the demands of work. Think about it this way. A group leader must take into consideration the abilities and skills of everyone when choosing a hiking route, right? Well, an organization and its leaders must have a work philosophy that takes into account human capabilities and the potential for overextension. An organization that sets an expectation of super-human effort, will find that the strong become exhausted carrying and compensating for the weaker members of the team which leads to the organization paying excessive cost to salvage the fallen.
Failure of an individual or the organization to take responsibility can destroy a team. Examples: A member becomes ill due to stress and takes time off during every project; however, the team is able to complete the project successfully without him. Over time, no one wants to be on his team and his career is impacted. Or another, a manager fills all open positions with entry-level employees. Over time, their inexperience places a burden on the senior members of the team. These team members begin to max out their sick leave and find new positions leaving behind a team that is incapable of meeting organizational expectations. Avoiding this situation is the responsibility of both the organization and the individual. The organization cannot expect more than what is reasonable and the individual must learn how to manage a reasonable level of stress on the job.
Mastering your response to stress in the work environment begins with recognizing that a certain level will always exist and may even be a positive influence in certain situations. It is normal, not abnormal. A manager’s responsibility may be to convince newly hired employees that chaos is normal and that it is not their fault. Rather than seeing it as a catastrophe, view it as an exhilarating experience that provides opportunities. We talk about working “outside the box”. This assumes that a box exists. There are many situations where we must create the box from nothing, decide how big it should be and figure out when to push out its limits and when to contract them back.
An obvious way that organizations can help employees master stress is through good healthcare programs. A comprehensive healthcare program includes six factors: (1) primary disease prevention, (2) secondary prevention through intervention and assessment, (3) disease management through behavior and pharmaceuticals, (4) illness absence management, (5) management of demand for health services, and (6) disability management. Most companies do not collect accurate data relating to absences caused by illness. Also, did you know that 48% of all patients in doctors’ offices and 60% plus of all patients in emergency rooms do not need to be there. Nurses on the phone or online through telemedicine programs could treat these people at a drastically reduced cost. Most companies do not have programs that support this approach.
Too many companies purchase whatever health plans they can afford and hope that costs will stay in line without realizing that corporate culture and individual responsibility have a dramatic impact on overall employee health and healthcare costs. Achieving reductions in health care costs without employee buy-in is difficult because many health issues are actually lifestyle issues. Obesity, smoking, lack of exercise, poor nutrition and an inability to manage stress are associated with 50 to 70 percent of all illnesses and medical issues. Between 70 and 80 percent of the aging process involves factors under an individual’s control. Take a single lifestyle choice, physical activity can reduce health costs by 8% – the same percentage that stress increases health costs according to a study by the Medstat Group. Other studies show that regular exercise reduces dementia by 50% and Alzheimer’s by 65%. Think of it this way, if you take care of yourself you are far more likely to live a longer more productive life than if you turn yourself over to the medical establishment to make repairs.
Wellness programs that include efforts to improve employee lifestyles and to screen before onset of disease improve health and reduce costs. Every $1,000 spent to help employees quit smoking yields $10,000 in savings over later treatment. A $100 mini-exam that determines that a person is on the verge of a heart attack can save $10,000 in post-attack care. Health insurance carriers will baulk at a $50 wellness program but not bat an eye when it pays out $1,300 per year once someone gets a disease. Less than 5% of the $1.8 trillions that Americans spend on healthcare goes to prevention rather than cure.
This may not surprise you, most company wellness programs remain voluntary. And, those that participate seem to be the employees that were healthy already. In order for employees and employers to reap the health and monetary benefits of a wellness plan it must be integrated so that all employees participate. Start with recognizing stress exists and reducing it through behavior modification supported by a wellness program.
Additional Resources
https://www.stress.org/workplace-stress/
https://hbr.org/2016/03/how-to-design-a-corporate-wellness-plan-that-actually-works
https://www.modahealth.com/pdfs/wellness/low_cost_activites.pdf
