Obesity and other aspects of employee health as an HR management and productivity issue

An Aon whitepaper by Beth Monahan entitled“Fighting Obesity is Key to Health and Productivity Management” raises an interesting issue.

Referring to a New York Times article, it states that “a group of large employers led by Ford Motor, Honeywell, General Mills and PepsiCo had announced a campaign to encourage overweight workers to slim down to improve both their personal health and the corporate bottom line.”

“[T]reatment for obesity-related illnesses is a major driver of surging U.S. healthcare costs, posting a $93 billion tab annually. . .. How does this affect the workplace? An analysis of General Motors’ healthcare plan found that overweight and obese people had medical bills up to $1,500 higher per year than people of healthy weight.”

“[O]ther factors . . . undermine employee health and productivity. Add in stress, workplace hazards, poor lifestyle choices, etc. and risk to financial performance grows exponentially. Consequently, many employers are beginning to look at health and productivity management as a whole in order to enhance business performance and retain key employees.”

“A truly holistic approach to health and productivity management examines occasional absences, paid and unpaid leave, presenteeism, healthcare, pharmacy, wellness, disease management, occupational and environmental health, workers’ compensation, and employee assistance programs. It looks at the impact these programs have on employee health and the net impact on productivity.” The whitepaper goes on to discuss components of such a holistic approach.

Presenteeism? That was a new one to me, so I googled it and found a definition here, stating it refers to situations where “employees are so scared of losing their jobs . . . that they work excessive hours or remain at work in the evenings in order to be seen to be there even when there is nothing to do.”

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