Alex Sebuliba 2m 553 #healthimpact
The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
What Impact Can Your Health Have On Your Business?
Businesses have a lot of challenges to deal with on a daily basis, even when everyone is fit and well, but these troubles increase when you take time off because you’re ill. You are one of the company’s most critical resources, and any time you have off that isn’t scheduled has the potential to derail projects and delay the completion of tasks. This has a knock-on effect as far as the business’s overall success is concerned.
It may be the case that companies don’t particularly suffer from these issues because they have enough employees and team members to cover short and long-term absences, but many of them will have trouble meeting the demands of the workload when they have fewer people to work with than expected. Even if this only happens for a day or two at a time, delays can soon pile up.
The work you perform is extremely influential as far as your health is concerned. Stress due to overwork, a sedentary role and poor diets due to limited culinary options in the area are contributors to the development of conditions like fatigue, diabetes and heart disease. For example, in the UK every year 160,000 people die from heart disease – in some of those cases, their jobs may well have been a factor.
Additionally, productivity suffers amongst employees who don’t have any time off ill – according to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, $84 billion was lost annually because of poor levels of productivity across the US. High absenteeism because of illness can lead to:
- Resentment amongst the employees who are asked to cover absent employees’ tasks – teams can easily fracture if it is perceived that certain employees might not be pulling their weight
- Poor quality of service or product due to a lack of trained employees – a business’s reputation, which might have been built on word of mouth, can easily be damaged if the product or service isn’t up-to-scratch
- Managers spending extra time sorting out scheduling and delegation rather than working on their own tasks
- Safety issues because of incomplete training
Productivity can also suffer when employees come to work when they shouldn’t – they’re not in the right frame of mind to work and give 100%, and they can cause damage even if they don’t mean to.
Employers should do what they can to deal with regular absenteeism in a way that limits its negative impact without seeming uncaring about those afflicted. For example, it can be beneficial for them to consider changing their processes or introducing measures to try and limit or handle absences more effectively so the organisation as a whole doesn’t suffer from them.
For instance, if affected employees don’t have any health insurance, companies might consider introducing a health insurance scheme that they can sign up to – this will help ease their financial worries, which will probably not be helping their condition. They could also run regular training sessions for employees in areas that aren’t directly related to their regular tasks so they are better equipped to take up the slack as and when they are required to do so. It’s all about finding the solution that works for your company and the circumstances you’re in.
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