While employers will correctly identify the challenge of modifying employee health behavior as the principal purpose of employee health management (EHM) investments, they should also recognize that changing their own behavior is equally important. There is no point in investing in EHM, for example, if employee turnover is high, since attempting to reduce health risks and manage existing diseases or impairment factors tends to pay off far more in the long than in the short run. If most employees will be gone before results occur, employers will gain little from them.

Moreover, if employer policies and procedures, as they often do, threaten and damage employees’ health, increase stress, for example, then they will automatically undermine efforts to improve employee health in almost all domains that are stress-sensitive. These include: blood pressure; heart disease and stroke; depression and anxiety; tobacco, alcohol and drug use – which can be major promoters of employee sickness, as well as direct causes of productivity and performance impairment, absences and turnover.

Workplace stress, for example, is the most frequently cited reason for employees to consider leaving their jobs, and even those merely considering it are likely to be less productive and more prone to poor performance than are those who are happy with their job and employer. Nearly half of all US employers (48%) say that stress is affecting their business performance. However, only 5% of them are doing anything about it. [“Few Employers Addressing Workplace Stress, Watson Wyatt Surveys Find” Press Release Feb 14, 2008. Watson Wyatt]

They cite causes such as: long hours and having to do more with less; work/life balance challenges; managers’ inability to recognize and find solutions for stress; extra time and hassles related to security, etc. But the cause they cite as one of the least important, mentioned by only 5% of employees in the survey, turned out to be the one where the highest percentage (27%) were taking strong action to address, while fewer than one in five, and in most cases, fewer than one in ten, were taking strong action about the others.

With stress recognized as the number one reason workers leave their employers, as well as a major causal factor for both sickness care costs and reduced productivity/performance at work, employers who fail to address stress are part of the problem in a major way. They decrease the chances that their employees will remain employed long enough for them to achieve the full economic benefits of their EHM investments. For example, in the largest study reporting long-term results, first year savings from EHM were only $233 per employee, then $375 in the second, but a major surge to $944 in the third and $950 in the fourth for employees who remained at the same employer and engaged in EHM for four years.

Moreover, with stress the most common health risk and performance impairment factor in most workforces, failure to address this factor automatically reduces the chances that sickness care costs, absences, presenteeism, and other labor costs will be reduced, or quality, customer satisfaction, and other revenue enhancing performance effects will be achieved. Before they invest in EHM, particularly in incentives to promote employee participation, employers should identify the extent to which they are part of the problem, themselves, and correct their “contribution” to the poor health and impaired productivity/performance they are trying to minimize.