As diseases become more prevalent, employers need to help workers cope or risk a decline in productivity
It’s not a traditional business concern, admits Diana MacKay.
The director of education, health and immigration programs at the Conference Board of Canada says many businesses haven’t had chronic illnesses top of mind. But they should, she said.
“It’s a productivity issue, it’s a competitiveness issue and so it makes sense from every angle,” she said. “It makes sense in terms of spending on health care in Canada, it makes sense in terms of business performance, it makes sense in terms of everybody’s individual interests, so probably a whole lot more of us should be focused on how businesses can improve health.”
The problem isn’t small. According to a September 2010 Conference Board briefing called Addressing Chronic Diseases: What’s Business Got To Do With It? about 42 per cent of Canadians age 12 and older said they had at least one chronic condition.
Business people have long been taught to focus on their core business and that tended not to be chronic disease, said MacKay.
But that should change. At business school, they teach students to do threat analysis and look for things that are going to affect a company’s ability to perform at its core business, she said.
“This should be, increasingly, popping up in those threat analyses,” she said. “Because the impact of chronic disease on a firm’s performance or an organization’s performance is increasingly evident and it’s largely because more and more of us are experiencing chronic conditions at younger ages when we’re at work.”
Many chronic diseases allow people to work while they are sick. While traditionally someone with a chronic illness might have been off work, today people with conditions like heart disease might be able to go to work while they are managing their health. But the disease could be having an affect on their productivity while they are there, she said.
“It’s an interesting question: What is the cost? Is the cost greater to have them at work?” she said. “I mean the assumption is the cost is less to have them at work, test that assumption though, it may be that it’s more costly to keep people with certain kinds of chronic diseases at work.”
Other potential impacts of chronic disease include increased absenteeism, more injuries and negative impacts on work quality or customer service, according the Conference Board briefing.
It’s not a problem that is going to go away on its own. The Conference Board briefing cites obesity and poor physical fitness as risk factors that increase the likelihood the problem will grow.
Governments offer prevention tools
The increasing prevalence of chronic disease and the risk factors associated with it is one of the reasons the City of Hamilton offers employers services to help with chronic disease prevention through the city’s healthy workplaces initiative.
In the past few years, city staff have moved away from displays and presentations to methods more likely to get through to a large number of people in the workplace, said Lisa Beaudoin, workplace health promotion specialist with the city.
Programs include giving businesses access to a registered dietician or content specialist who would meet with the employer to help create a healthy workplace guideline or formal policy.
Changes like this affect the culture of a workplace so the impact lasts longer and is more cost effective, said Beaudoin.
To encourage health at work there have to be programs and policies in place that make the healthy choice the easy choice, she said.
It’s a matter of employees being able to walk into the kitchen or cafeteria at work and have healthy choices available. Companies can have walking routes mapped out and displayed so employees can get their exercise in at work, she said.
It all goes back to the importance of intellectual capital, she said.
“When you have healthy people you have productive workers.”
Mentally and physically fit for work
If an employee is dealing with a chronic physical issue, there may be reason to believe that person could be susceptible to mental illness as well.
Coexisting physical and mental illness is something organizations should be thinking about, said Karen Seward, executive vice-president of business development and marketing at Morneau Shepell, a human resources consulting firm. At a recent presentation she said 17 to 27 per cent of those with cardiac illness also deal with major depression.
“There’s a comorbidity between physical and mental health,” she said. “It’s not unreasonable to think that someone that has a heart attack can have depression following a heart attack.
“Oftentimes it’s easier for somebody to talk about the physical than it is the mental so we’ll focus on the physical.”
Mental health problems themselves can be chronic illnesses.
A recently released study from the Conference Board of Canada revealed 44 per cent of people are dealing with or have dealt with a mental health issue.
Companies should be paying attention to mental health in the workplace because the prevalence is so high, said Seward.
“It’s a business issue, anything that is escalating at that fast a pace needs to have an action plan around it,” she said.
“It doesn’t discriminate, it can be the CEO, it can be the executive, it can be the person who is sitting next to you.”
Technology and mental health
Current work conditions may not be the greatest for maintaining good mental health.
Technology is great for efficiency and keeping in touch but the problem is it can cause stress and in turn mental health issues if people don’t know the parameters around which the technology should be used, said Seward.
“If you sleep with your BlackBerry beside your bed, are you waking up at two o’clock in the morning and checking to see what’s come in? Are you able to sit in a restaurant and have a conversation without checking your BlackBerry five times?
“That becomes a challenge for people, the disconnect,” she said.
The director of education, health and immigration programs at the Conference Board of Canada says many businesses haven’t had chronic illnesses top of mind. But they should, she said.
“It’s a productivity issue, it’s a competitiveness issue and so it makes sense from every angle,” she said. “It makes sense in terms of spending on health care in Canada, it makes sense in terms of business performance, it makes sense in terms of everybody’s individual interests, so probably a whole lot more of us should be focused on how businesses can improve health.”
The problem isn’t small. According to a September 2010 Conference Board briefing called Addressing Chronic Diseases: What’s Business Got To Do With It? about 42 per cent of Canadians age 12 and older said they had at least one chronic condition.
Business people have long been taught to focus on their core business and that tended not to be chronic disease, said MacKay.
But that should change. At business school, they teach students to do threat analysis and look for things that are going to affect a company’s ability to perform at its core business, she said.
“This should be, increasingly, popping up in those threat analyses,” she said. “Because the impact of chronic disease on a firm’s performance or an organization’s performance is increasingly evident and it’s largely because more and more of us are experiencing chronic conditions at younger ages when we’re at work.”
Many chronic diseases allow people to work while they are sick. While traditionally someone with a chronic illness might have been off work, today people with conditions like heart disease might be able to go to work while they are managing their health. But the disease could be having an affect on their productivity while they are there, she said.
“It’s an interesting question: What is the cost? Is the cost greater to have them at work?” she said. “I mean the assumption is the cost is less to have them at work, test that assumption though, it may be that it’s more costly to keep people with certain kinds of chronic diseases at work.”
Other potential impacts of chronic disease include increased absenteeism, more injuries and negative impacts on work quality or customer service, according the Conference Board briefing.
It’s not a problem that is going to go away on its own. The Conference Board briefing cites obesity and poor physical fitness as risk factors that increase the likelihood the problem will grow.
Governments offer prevention tools
The increasing prevalence of chronic disease and the risk factors associated with it is one of the reasons the City of Hamilton offers employers services to help with chronic disease prevention through the city’s healthy workplaces initiative.
In the past few years, city staff have moved away from displays and presentations to methods more likely to get through to a large number of people in the workplace, said Lisa Beaudoin, workplace health promotion specialist with the city.
Programs include giving businesses access to a registered dietician or content specialist who would meet with the employer to help create a healthy workplace guideline or formal policy.
Changes like this affect the culture of a workplace so the impact lasts longer and is more cost effective, said Beaudoin.
To encourage health at work there have to be programs and policies in place that make the healthy choice the easy choice, she said.
It’s a matter of employees being able to walk into the kitchen or cafeteria at work and have healthy choices available. Companies can have walking routes mapped out and displayed so employees can get their exercise in at work, she said.
It all goes back to the importance of intellectual capital, she said.
“When you have healthy people you have productive workers.”
Mentally and physically fit for work
If an employee is dealing with a chronic physical issue, there may be reason to believe that person could be susceptible to mental illness as well.
Coexisting physical and mental illness is something organizations should be thinking about, said Karen Seward, executive vice-president of business development and marketing at Morneau Shepell, a human resources consulting firm. At a recent presentation she said 17 to 27 per cent of those with cardiac illness also deal with major depression.
“There’s a comorbidity between physical and mental health,” she said. “It’s not unreasonable to think that someone that has a heart attack can have depression following a heart attack.
“Oftentimes it’s easier for somebody to talk about the physical than it is the mental so we’ll focus on the physical.”
Mental health problems themselves can be chronic illnesses.
A recently released study from the Conference Board of Canada revealed 44 per cent of people are dealing with or have dealt with a mental health issue.
Companies should be paying attention to mental health in the workplace because the prevalence is so high, said Seward.
“It’s a business issue, anything that is escalating at that fast a pace needs to have an action plan around it,” she said.
“It doesn’t discriminate, it can be the CEO, it can be the executive, it can be the person who is sitting next to you.”
Technology and mental health
Current work conditions may not be the greatest for maintaining good mental health.
Technology is great for efficiency and keeping in touch but the problem is it can cause stress and in turn mental health issues if people don’t know the parameters around which the technology should be used, said Seward.
“If you sleep with your BlackBerry beside your bed, are you waking up at two o’clock in the morning and checking to see what’s come in? Are you able to sit in a restaurant and have a conversation without checking your BlackBerry five times?
“That becomes a challenge for people, the disconnect,” she said.
