A culture of health creates competitive advantage

Every employer is looking for ways to improve business success. Improving workforce health is becoming an important part of employers’ business strategy. An organization’s commitment to a culture of health and the health status of its workforce has a strong relationship to employee job performance. Employees in these organizations spend more time working, work more carefully and concentrate better than employees at other organizations, according to research by the Integrated Benefits Institute.

One study asked employees to rate their organization’s interests in employee health and creating a healthy workplace. The majority of respondents (86%) rated the health culture in their organization as excellent or good; the remaining 14% rated their organization’s health culture as fair or poor. This study used a research database of health risk appraisal data from 1,268 employees at 53 employers.

Employees also measured difficulties they encountered in their job performance during the prior 28 days. The research revealed a statistically significant relationship between an organization’s health culture and job performance measurements such as carefulness, diligence and concentration at work.

Not careful at work. Workers in an organization with a weak health culture reported not being careful at work “all” or “most of the time” more than three times more frequently than those who work in organizations with a strong health culture.

• Not working as often. Forty-four percent  more employees who work in an organization with a weak health culture reported not working as often as they should have “all” or “most of the time,” compared with employees in organizations with a strong health culture.

• Not concentrating. Thirty-one percent more employees who work in companies with a weak health culture reported they did not concentrate “all” or “most of the time,” compared with employees in organizations with a strong health culture.

• Getting less work done. There was no difference in the responses from those in a strong versus a weak health culture with regard to getting less work done — but employee health is a differentiating factor. Emotional distress and overall health strongly influence how much an employee accomplishes, and employees in organizations with a weak health culture fared worse on both these measures.

The job performance gap across strong and weak health cultures remained statistically significant even when accounting for workers’ personal characteristics and physical and mental health status.
If a workplace sets a high priority on the health of employees, then it can reasonably be said that an employer’s culture gives it a competitive advantage. Workplace culture reflects the priorities of company leadership and is an area where employers have some leverage to improve business performance.

As more employers recognize that health influences productivity — and health care costs — health outcomes such as absence, disability and performance/presenteeism are increasingly being brought into the larger discussion of the cost to business of poor employee health. When employers understand that organizational factors influence not only the health of their workers, but also their performance and contribution to the company, they can take steps to improve the lives of their workers and their bottom lines — both bottom and top line: costs, performance — at the same time.

Thomas Parry is president of the IBI, an independent nonprofit membership organization and  leading provider of health and productivity research, measurement and benchmarking.