In an increasingly complex environment, can we increase the economic and social performance of companies while reducing health costs?
Today’s professional world is becoming more and more stressful due to a constant connection and an intensifying race for productivity.
According to the study “The Workforce View in Europe 2018” conducted by ADP, European employees are under pressure. It indicates that “European employers show a flagrant lack of interest in the mental health of their employees” and consequently 18% of European employees say they suffer daily from stress at work.
This daily stress creates a decrease in productivity, commitment and an increase in absenteeism which directly impacts the employer because this syndrome generates a loss of earnings.
An employee suffering from burnout is not able to work and the recovery time is very long, between nine months and two years, if he recovers at all. Moreover, once the employee has recovered, he or she can become depressed, which prolongs the period of unavailability.
Burnout prevention should therefore be more important for companies because it has a strong impact. In Europe, for example, the annual cost of work-related depression is estimated at 617 billion euros and includes the costs borne by employers as a result of absenteeism and presentism; namely the action of going to work while one’s state of health prevents one from being fully productive (272 billion euros), the loss of productivity (242 billion euros), the cost of health care (63 billion) and the amount of disability benefits (39 billion).
Unfortunately, it is usually the best people in a company who are affected by burnout, those who could be considered indispensable.
How to prevent this problem?
The following questions will help you take stock of your organization’s maturity in the face of it:
- Are we able to reduce work-related health risks ?
- Do we know if our employees are at risk of burnout ?
- Can we reduce the risk of burnout within the company ?
- Can we quickly get a clear overview of the company’s situation ?
- Are we able to quantify the company’s productivity level ?
- Can we quantify the loss of productivity ?
- Do we have a common steering tool for the CEO, the human resources manager and the occupational health and safety manager ?
Risks should be detected early and acted upon in time to minimize impacts on the business and people. It would therefore be interesting to have health indicators such as: the negative influence of stress on health, the level of risk of harassment, the level of risk of burnout, the perception of the risk of occupational accidents, etc.
Solutions are already available to address these issues, but organizations still need to take ownership of them. To cope with sudden changes in an uncertain, volatile, complex and ambiguous environment, human organizations must be able to recombine themselves quickly and easily. To do this, they will have to improve their responsiveness and simplicity by using indicators such as those mentioned earlier, by taking measures and above all by monitoring trends and actions taken. Not monitoring the actions implemented can greatly reduce their effectiveness, whereas with monitoring we can exceed expectations, by adjusting actions or replacing them for example.
Our Economic and social performance solution was created in order to control this risk.