When employers focus only on the direct, out-of-pocket costs of health care, they fail to consider the indirect costs of illness in the workplace form workers’ impaired functioning on the job and absenteeism. The authors present a case study of the effects of clinical depression on direct and indirect health-related costs and provide a model that employers can apply to a wide range of illnesses to analyze their investments in health care. The authors apply the framework to several workplace situations — employees’ depression, cigarette smoking breaks, and arthritis — to estimate the costs of lost productivity. They also show how to do a break-even analysis to determine when employers’ investments in health interventions are likely justified.
3 Comments On: Economic Consequences of Illness in the Workplace
There are many illnesses which affect the economics of the workplace. Some of these cause time off work, but there is another set of illnesses which do not cause absences but cause functional impairment. Things like arthritis can cause decreased performance and efficiency.
Interesting point of view on illness at workplace
Indirect costs of illness in the workplace are SIGNIFICANT! In our office the subject of depression has been historically taboo, not any longer. In fact, recent company surveys have uncovered a very large percentage of our office workforce has admitted, at least on a printed form they deal with depression, day-to-day…