As health care costs continue to rise, demands and stress on employees skyrocket. Global business pressures create the need to do more with less, and employers seek to improve the health and productivity (H&P) of their employees. Yet many companies are not getting the same return on their investments in H&P programs as their peers.

The 2007/2008 Staying@Work report, Building an Effective Health & Productivity Framework, details current trends and best practices, including employer-sponsored H&P programs. Its findings document that the companies with the most effective health and productivity programs have superior financial returns and productivity improvements. These employers achieve success by using multiple best practices including: employee engagement (incentives, organizational alignment and communication), programs (design, delivery and systems technology) and measurement (processes, risk reduction, financial and quality). These employers integrate their programs and practices, foster employee participation and emphasize the direct link to employee retention, productivity and shareholder value.

Key Findings

• Companies with the most effective H&P programs experienced superior performance in three significant areas: They achieved 20 percent more revenue per employee, have 16.1 percent higher market value and delivered 57 percent higher shareholder returns.
• The most effective H&P companies are more likely to have lower program costs and incidence rates for short- and long-term disability and incidental sick pay programs compared with last year.
• Companies with the most effective H&P programs are more than three times as likely as other companies to integrate health management programs through a single-access-point technology platform and more than five times as likely to integrate health and time-off programs. These companies also provide educational tools, offer onsite health centers, connect H&P goals to broader organizational initiatives, solicit employee feedback and measure employee understanding, behavioral change and satisfaction.
• Forty-eight percent of organizations say that job-related stress — created by long hours and doing more with less — affects business performance. Although only 5 percent are taking strong action to address it, those companies with the most effective H&P programs are three times as likely to do so as their less effective peers.
• Few employees are being held accountable for improving and maintaining their health. While 79 percent of those surveyed believe that employees should be held accountable, only 4 percent actually are. Similarly, 68 percent think managers should be held accountable for workforce productivity (i.e., employees are at work and fully productive), but only 13 percent are.
• The two most commonly cited barriers to effectively managing H&P are lack of data (45 percent) and organizational structure (41 percent).
• The most common H&P programs provide tools that encourage health and wellness (85 percent), promote emotional health (82 percent) and educate employees on safety (63 percent).