Healthy lifestyle and stress-management programs are beginning to take a front seat in the emergence of a new holistic corporate culture.  Companies, from Coca-Cola to Dupont are seeing the short- and long-term economic benefits of wellness programs in the workplace.

From lowering health care costs to lower absenteeism and fewer disability claims, wellness and stress-reduction programs in the workplace, have a positive affect on the bottom line…


Health care expenditures are nearly 50% greater for workers who report high levels of stress.

     – The Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine⁴

Workers who must take time off work because of stress, anxiety, or a related disorder will be off the job for about 20 days.

     – Bureau of Labor Statistics⁵

Pacific Bell’s FitWorks participants claim $300 less per case for a one-year savings of $700,000. Savings for conditions related to a sedentary lifestyle are $722 per case.
Pacific Bell’s FitWorks program decreased absent days 0.8 percent to save $2 million in one year. FitWorks members also spent 3.3 days less on short-term disability for an additional savings of $4.7 million.⁶

Coca Cola reported a reduction in health care claims with an exercise program alone, saving $500 per employee per year for the employees (60%) who joined their HealthWorks fitness program.⁷

Prudential Insurance Company reports that the company's major medical costs dropped from $574 to $312 for each participant in its wellness program.⁸

A 2-year study by The DuPont Corporation of the effect of its comprehensive health promotion program on absences among workers reports that blue collar employees at intervention sites had a 14% decline in disability days vs. 5.8% decline for controls. There were a total of 11,726 fewer net disability days.⁹

A Johnson & Johnson study found that employee attitude changes were greater at health promotion intervention sites with significant positive attitude changes noted in the categories of organizational commitment, supervision, working conditions, job competence/security, and pay/benefits.¹⁰

There is compelling evidence that a sizable portion of the billions of dollars currently spent by employers on health-related costs, is preventable by means of health promotion programming. Well-planned, comprehensive health promotion programs have been shown to be cost-effective, especially when the health promotion programming is matched to the health problems of the specific employee population.¹¹

According to Good Morning America "absentee-ism has tripled at the workplace in the last year due to stress.

     -Good Morning America, ABC TV, 2001

 40 % of workers report their job is "very or extremely stressful".
 One-fourth of employees view their jobs as the number one stressor in their lives.

     -Northwestern National Life

Problems at work are more strongly associated with health complaints than are any other  life stressor - more so than even financial or family problems. 

     -St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Co.

Three-fourths of employees believe workers have more on-the-job stress than a generation ago. 

     -Princeton Survey Research Associates

 26% of employees report they are "often or very often burned out or stressed by their  work."

     -Families and Work Institute

 29% of workers complain that they are "quite a bit or extremely stressed at work."
     -Yale University Survey

The last Labor Day Gallup Poll on Attitudes in the American Workplace found that:

• 80% of workers feel stress on the job.
• Nearly half say they need help in managing stress.
• 42% say their coworkers need such help.

The November 2000 Integra Realty Resources Survey similarly found that:

• 65% of workers said that workplace stress had caused difficulties.
• 62% routinely find that they end the day with work-related neck pain.
• 44% reported stressed-out eyes.
• 38% complained of hurting hands.
• 19% or almost one in five had quit a previous position because of job stress.
• 12% had called in sick because of workplace stress, and this is a growing problem.

The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work reported that over half of the 550 million working days lost annually in the U.S. from absenteeism are stress related and that one in five of all last minute no-shows are due to job stress. If this occurs in key employees it can have a domino effect that spreads down the line to disrupt scheduled operations.† Unanticipated absenteeism is estimated to cost American companies $602.00/worker/year and the price tag for large employers could approach $3.5 million annually. A 1997 three year study conducted by one large corporation found that 60% of employee absences could be traced to psychological problems that were due to job stress. ¹³

The estimated annual costs of stress for the United States as a whole range from $200-$300 billion. The impact to employers includes decreased performance, productivity and quality, more accidents and injuries, increased healthcare costs and higher levels of absenteeism and turnover.

Organizations are in a unique and powerful position to assist employees and their fami- lies in dealing effectively with stress and stressful life events (Cooper and Kompier 1999;Ganster and Murphy 2000).This assistance can significantly strengthen the psy- chological contract (Rousseau 1995) or bond between employees and employer, leading to improvements in operational effectiveness and profitability (Cascio 1999). For example, D’Andrea (1999) compared the stock performance of the 61 companies on the Working Mothe rlist of “best companies to work for ”with the Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 Index during the period 1996- 1998. All of the listed companies had supportive benefits, policies and practices to help employees deal with personal and family challenges. Study results indicated that these firms consistently outperformed the S&P 500 over the two-year period. ¹⁴

When caring for the individuals in your organization improves the fiscal health of the company…initiating a wellness program just makes sense!

Yoga Journal, March/April 1999

Penny-Wise and Pound-Foolish?  How Wellness Will Separate Corporate Winners from Losers

Monster.com
http://content.monster.ca/12824_en-CA_p1.asp

Meditation: New Research Shows that it Changes the Brain in Ways that Alleviate Stress

⁴ "Stress...At Work," National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, 99-101,1999.
⁵ Ibid.
⁶  Blair, Susan, "The FitWorks Savings Story," Pacific Bell, 1996.
⁷ Wellness Councils of America, "Corporate Leaders Laud Benefits of Wellness," Worksite Wellness Works, May 1995.
⁸ Thompson, Dennis. "Wellness Works for Small Employers, Too." Personnel, March 1990: 26-28.
⁹  Bertera, R. "The Effects of Workplace Health Promotion on Absenteeism and Employee Costs in a Large Industrial Population." American Journal of Public Health, September 1990: 1101-1105.
¹⁰ R. Holzbach et al. "Effect of a Comprehensive Health Promotion Program on Employee Attitudes". Journal of Occupational Medicine, 1993.
¹¹ Patton James. "Work-Site Health Promotion: An Economic Model". Journal of Occupational Medicine, August 1991: 868-873
¹² ISMA-USA Newsletter, The International Stress Management Association, 3, 1, 2001.
¹³ Ibid.
¹⁴ Charles J. Hobson et al., "Results From a National Survey of Stressful Life Events" Benefits Quarterly, 3, 2001, p. 47.