Unhealthy or sick employees are costing Jamaican organisations billions of dollars each year in lost hours due to absenteeism and low productivity, experts estimate; but they say only a handful of companies are doing anything to reverse the trend.

While much attention is paid to reducing work stoppages due to industrial action, companies seem to care less about man-hours lost to illnesses, the most culpable of which is depression induced by unmanaged stress, employee dissatisfaction and unpleasant work environment.

“An effective wellness programme should be part of any cost-containment strategy of any organisation,” suggests Dr Don Hall, a presenter/trainer with United States-based Wellness Source Inc, which promotes healthy lifestyle.

Hall was the presenter at a recent wellness seminar attended by over 50 participants drawn from leading Jamaican financial institutions, mining companies, government agencies, universities, hotels, power supply companies, beer manufacturers, developers and product distributors.

The two-day seminar, held at the Knutsford Court Hotel in Kingston, was aimed at devising strategies to persuade the decision-makers to ‘buy into’ an integrated wellness programme for their staff.

The plan was for the participants to leave with the ability to develop a systematic approach to improving the lives of the staff they manage, by reducing the factors that lead to unhealthy and dissatisfied workers and often to crippling lifestyle diseases.

In turn, companies would save millions of dollars in health-care cost and lost productivity, the organisers argued.

The participants heard that while statistics for work stoppages and the resultant loss of man-hours were easy to come by, the same could not be said for productive hours lost to employee illnesses.

For example, the Statistical Institute of Jamaica (STATIN) was able to report that in 2003, a total of 65,976 man-hours was lost.

The breakdown included:

. 2,800 man-hours lost to the mining sector;

. a combined 500 hours to the service industry, including finance, insurance, real estate and other business services;

. 1,805 man-hours to the emerging aquaculture sector;

. 210 hours to the manufacturing sector and 106 man-hours in construction.

The combined industries of transport, storage, (tele)communications, community, social and personal services accounted for the remainder of the lost man-hours.

No such statistics existed for man-hours lost due to employee illnesses.

However, some managers at the seminar were convinced that there was more to the high level of absenteeism among workers than low salaries and that there needed to be a wholistic approach to taking care of the human capital under their care.

They pointed to the need for improved skills training, better nutrition, which enhances well-being and subsequently results in increased productivity and “a more wholistic approach” to health care at the workplace. Some said programmes were being implemented in a ‘piecemeal’ fashion and were therefore not as effective as expected.

The seminar, titled “Developing successful health management Systems”, was organised by the Health Profit Group in collaboration with the Wellness Source Inc.

In his presentation, Dr Hall drew on studies conducted in the United States showing that in 2000:

. ill employees cost US companies 15.2 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) – up from 11.1 per cent in 1990;

. in Canada – 10 per cent of GDP; and

. in Britain – eight per cent of GDP.

He noted that in the past three years, health insurance costs in the US increased by 12.5 per cent and that there was a direct correlation between the health of the employees of an organisation and health-care costs.

Employees who were considered multiple health risks were at the high end of the company’s health-care costs and included several preventable risk factors such as smoking, high blood pressure, alcoholism, high stress and low satisfaction with life, among others.

But his most startling revelation was that a study – conducted by the journal of the American Medical Association in 2002 to estimate the impact of depression on labour costs – showed that in the US, depression not only contributes to low productivity but costs organisations a staggering US$44 billion per year in labour costs.

This was $31 billion more than workers without depression.

Hall’s presentation caused raised eyebrows when he disclosed that employees who are depressed but turned up for work usually experience excessively lower productivity than those employees who are not depressed and absent.

He said overweight, obese and other employees who had poor diets and led sedentary lives were far less productive and tended to be ill more frequently than employees who did a minimal amount of exercise and improved their diets even slightly.

Hall pointed out several times during his presentation that Jamaica had little or no data for comparative analysis on how each ill/well worker contributed to the gross domestic product.

However, he urged the participants to begin with their individual organisations by identifying the potentially high-risk individuals and to start a wellness programme aimed at assisting them in improving their health.

“The cost-benefit analysis would prove to be a considerable savings to the organisation,” he said, adding that this could be a tool to get decision-makers to buy into the programme.

The wellness management initiative is part of a region-wide project for Patricia Fletcher, a nutritionist and corporate wellness consultant to the Health Profit Group.

“It is really a Caribbean vision which we plan to expand into Trinidad and Tobago in November of this year, and Barbados in early 2006 and beyond.

We hope that the practitioners here will take it beyond the corporation, into their churches, schools and communities until we have adopted a lifestyle that supports a healthier society, a healthier world,” Fletcher told the Sunday Observer.