Most of today’s workplace-wellness programs focus on weight loss and smoking cessation. While these two conditions eventually can cause serious health issues, are they really what the workplace should be putting most of its focus on? After all, employees who are obese or who smoke can still be very engaged and productive, and they might not experience significant health issues for many years. Thus, the “ROI” is distant and uncertain.
What if, instead of focusing on weight or smoking, employer-based programs focused on stress and depression? Consider:
• There is a good likelihood that more employees are suffering from stress or depression than from obesity or smoking.
• Stress and depression have immediate adverse health and engagement/productivity impacts.
• A significant reduction of either stress or depression will have an almost immediate positive impact on an employee’s engagement, productivity and health.
• The chances of success in treating stress or depression can be better than for treating obesity or smoking.
Let’s for the moment consider a hypothetical employee who is all too representative of our workplace today:
“SARAH SMITH”
A 45-year old woman who has been an employee at “Madison Industries” for 15 years, “Sarah Smith” (a composite representation) is clinically obese, has high blood pressure and cholesterol, is prediabetic, has chronic back pain and suffers from depression and anxiety. She’s a single mom of three with financial challenges and little help at home. She doggedly shows up for work each day, as she has for 15 years, and goes through the motions. She knows that she is incapable of giving her all in her job – she is distracted by her challenges, has issues with concentration and has ceased to care much about her job other than keeping it. She is in survival mode.
Sarah understands intellectually that she must lose weight and change her current trajectory toward full-blown diabetes and disability. But she finds it impossible to even make the decision to take the necessary steps to change her lifestyle, much less actually take them. She is overwhelmed.
Madison’s wellness program of diet, exercise and smoking cessation is so far off her radar screen that for her, it doesn’t even exist. Exercise? Diet? Forget it. And quit smoking? That’s one of her few enjoyments in life. At least she doesn’t drink or use drugs.
It is apparent that improved health comes through long-term lifestyle change, which requires a fundamentally personal decision to change one’s life. Sarah is a typical Gen Xer who takes pride in her ability to survive on her own. But deep down, she knows she needs a “buddy” or a coach. Doing this alone is difficult enough for most people, but for an employee such as Sarah who is clinically depressed and under enormous stress, it is virtually impossible without the right help. Sarah is not weak; she simply lacks the fundamental resources to engage. The fact of the matter is that mental and emotional challenges not only are barriers to her undertaking long-term change toward healthier living; they are themselves components of her poor health.
STRESS TOLLS
Traditional wellness programs focus almost exclusively on the physical health side and not on the mental/emotional challenges of employees. That’s hardly surprising since the American medical system does the same, focusing on physical health to the maddening exclusion of mental health. The medical community tends to define good health by the absence of disease or sickness – not by a positive condition of engagement, thriving and happiness.
This mistake has been one of the primary reasons why today’s wellness programs in America have failed to either reduce health care coverage costs or make employees more engaged and productive. Eight billion dollars a year largely wasted.
Approaching employee health in a one-dimensional, physical health-only manner that does not address the mental/emotional barriers to good health through healthier lifestyles is doomed to failure. Sarah Smith’s tale demonstrates how important those mental and emotional barriers are. Imagine how much better Sarah’s chances might be to achieve better long-term physical and mental health if she worked within an environment and culture that facilitated her well-being; if she were able to participate in programs or counseling that substantially reduced her stress and depression; and if she had access to a coach to help her through her seemingly insurmountable problems with her back pain and her difficulties in doing what she has to do to overcome these conditions.
There are some who persist in claiming that addressing mental and emotional health issues has no place at work. That is so Middle Ages as to be laughable, but it persists. Clearly, such issues have become critical roadblocks to living healthier lifestyles, as well as to productivity in the workplace, something that very definitely is the employer’s “business.”
According to “Stressed in America,” a 2015 study by the American Psychological Association, almost one-third of adults report that stress resulting from money, work and family issues has a “very strong” or “strong” impact on their physical and mental health.
Despite a growing awareness of “the overwhelmed employee,” research shows there is a pervasive failure to act in most organizations. According to the National Business Group on Health and Towers Watson’s 2013-14 “Staying @ Work Report,” the top wellness challenge identified by leaders is stress. Seventy-eight percent of leaders are reporting that this is their top concern, but only 15 percent of organizations are actually taking measures to address the issue.
Many on-the-job factors contribute to the rise in workplace-related stress. According to “The Relationship Between Workplace Stressors and Mortality and Health Costs in the United States,” published by the American Institute of Stress in 2015, long hours, lack of control, job insecurity and perceptions of unfairness create toxic conditions that adversely affect health and engagement, and hinder positive lifestyle changes.
Employees often do not disclose mental health conditions at work because they fear it would jeopardize their jobs. This has led to many mental health disorders going untreated, damaging an employee’s health, career and productivity. Most employee assistance programs barely address these issues.
Author Ray Williams described mental illness as “a silent tsunami in the workplace, one that could engulf organizations in myriad productivity and profitability problems ... unless mental health is addressed as seriously as are marketing, compensation and strategic plans.”
A Harvard University report states that untreated mental illness costs American businesses in excess of $100 billion in lost productivity alone. Upward of 60 percent of Americans with mental illness receive no treatment.
So, why on earth do we persist on focusing on conditions that actually have low impact on work performance and that have long horizons for ROI?
Because we just haven’t thought this through, and because we continue to avoid mental/emotional illness issues in the workplace due to a misplaced fear of intrusiveness, or stigma.
This must cease if we are to leave the Middle Ages, and make any progress toward employee well-being, greater engagement, better productivity and lower health care coverage costs.
James E. Purcell is a speaker and writer on well-being in the workplace, with a new eBook at returnsonwellbeing.com. He is the former CEO of Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island.
