NEW DELHI: Indian Council For Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) in its study based on a survey of disparate companies across 15 states of India, showed 12% of blue-collar workers were at a high risk of getting a debilitating disease compared to 4% of the medium and senior-level employees.
While blue-collar workers are generally afflicted with acute as well as chronic infectious diseases like tuberculosis and AIDS, senior executives are more prone to lifestyle diseases, owing to lack of exercise and dietary control.
ICRIER's survey corroborates what Apollo Hospitals found in its study 'Health and Wellness Survey (2003)'. The study said more than half of the executives were prone to lifestyle diseases. And nearly 71% of the employees and 82% of CEOs were overweight. It had also found nearly 48% of the employees and 69% of CEOs were physically unfit.
The direct impact of employee sickness is reflected in mandays lost. ICRIER's survey shows almost a quarter of the companies lose approximately 50 mandays in a year due to sickness. Another 34% companies lose between 10 to 50 mandays. This translates into an equal percentage of loss in their productivity and bottomlines. The survey notes that companies are aware of how employee sickness affects their bottomlines.
To mitigate some of the cost, two-thirds of respondent firms have introduced preventive healthcare as part of their corporate governance strategy.
However, less than one-third make provision for the whole range of preventive healthcare measures for their staff. Many of them feel providing health insurance is good enough.
The report also suggests a well-designed employee wellness programme by companies could lead to 25% reduction in their health-plan costs, sick leave, disability pay and workers compensation. Reducing just one health risk increases an employee's on-the-job productivity by 9% and cuts absenteeism by 2%.
The report sums up with some suggestions both for the government and India Inc. These include conducting a health audit of all employees at regular intervals, introduction of preventive healthcare benefits and vouchers
13 Sep 2007 TNN
