A prominent and ever-growing cause of financial loss to businesses is obesity, as described in the previous post. That post included as a subheading “The big but…” which is indicative of the problem in general: Obesity is such an easy target for mockery.
One difficulty with this topic is the temptation to succumb to flippancy and make jokes about the ruinous cost to widen the doorways in workplaces, and replace collapsed chairs… which would be wrong. The humor temptation might be why obesity, as a contributing factor to presenteeism, does not cause as much concern as it should.
But for some very dedicated scholars and business experts, the problem is (to reference another corny old joke) “serious as a heart attack.” They and their colleagues have discovered that in the world of work, presenteeism (reporting for duty but performing less than optimally) is actually more expensive than absenteeism, or not showing up at all. Now, why, in the business realm, is obesity seen as exceptionally harmful to the bottom line?
A worker with a broken wrist will eventually have the cast removed and, after a period of readjustment, will probably return to their original state of productivity. A pregnant worker may need some extra leeway, but will eventually become, instead, the parent of a child who is elsewhere during working hours. That situation offers its own challenges to an employed woman, but most are able to return to their pre-motherhood level of usefulness on the job.
Another big but…
However, in most cases, obesity does not go away. Usually, it increases. Over time, whatever negative effect an employee’s obesity has on the situation will probably not change for the better, and will probably change for the worse.
But how, exactly, does obesity contribute to presenteeism, and how does it do that in an especially impactful and intractable way? Exactly how do our collective tons of excess body fat add to the price of doing business, and thus increase the amount that consumers pay for every product, service, and commodity?
Not surprisingly, it is possible to find a raft of academic papers exploring the relationship between excess weight and presenteeism. The connections may not be immediately obvious to the casual eye, but they certainly exist. There are many reasons why a person’s Body Mass Index might affect their ability to do top-notch work. Also, there is said to be a “threshold effect,” meaning that the workers with a BMI of 35 or higher are significantly less productive than their slimmer counterparts.
Moderately or extremely obese workers… experienced the greatest health-related work limitations, specifically regarding time needed to complete tasks and ability to perform physical job demands. These workers experienced a 4.2% health-related loss in productivity, 1.18% more than all other employees, which equates to an additional $506 annually in lost productivity per worker.
In 2010, journalist Alyssa Zamora described the work done by Eric Finkelstein and many others at Duke-National University of Singapore. Researchers took into consideration “three factors: employee medical expenditures, lost productivity on the job due to health problems (presenteeism), and absence from work (absenteeism).” Furthermore, health problems cost more than medical expenditures.
Zamora wrote,
Collectively, the per capita costs of obesity are as high as $16,900 for obese women with a body mass index (BMI) over 40 (roughly 100 pounds overweight) and $15,500 for obese men in the same BMI class. Presenteeism makes up the largest share of those costs.
Bottom line: “The cost of obesity among U.S. full-time employees is estimated to be $73.1 billion.”
Your responses and feedback are welcome!
Source: “Obesity and presenteeism: the impact of body mass index on workplace productivity,” NIH.gov, January 2008
Source: “Obese Workers Cost More Than Healthcare, Absenteeism,” Duke.edu, 2010
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