Workplace Wellness : Book Review

"The Healthy Scorecard" is a book by Danielle Pratt published in 2001 which does a brilliant job of clarifying the dimensions of employee health and demonstrating that there is a tremendous synergy in what is good for employees and what is good for companies and organizations. Maureen Shaw, CEO of the Industrial Accident Prevention Association notes that, "This book makes us look at the very nature of the system of quality, health and safety as it is currently practiced."

Danielle lists 5 key points in her introduction, which read as follows:

What drives superior and sustained business results? A look at the Sears 10-point index and the Gallup 12. New thinking - What really makes workplaces healthy? A summary of the research. Good health is good leadership is great business...and we can prove it! The piece de resistance - the Healthy Strategy Map. Easy money - How investors will profit from this synergy. Leadership Check-ups - Self-assessments at the end of each chapter.

This book is very well researched and referenced and one can get a feel for her direct and practical writing style from a section from the opening chapter, "The Untapped Frontier."

Opportunity Costs: The Underside of the Health Cost Iceberg

But for us to adopt a Strategic Health Focus, leaders need to be convinced that health pays. True, there will always be stellar organizations and leaders for whom this is a no-brainer, and who invest in health on humanitarian grounds. But even this is a risky proposition.

For health to be widely embraced in the business community as a strategic business imperative, we need to step up to the plate with some numbers. And I've been finding numbers that excite executives and directors!

Traditionally, we have captured direct costs such as Worker's Compensation, short and long-term disability costs, and drug costs. These are substantial in their own right. BC Hydro for example incurred over $20 million in direct health costs in 1999. As Ken Webb, Manager of Corporate Health and Safety noted

"We'd really be paying attention to $20 million of maintenance costs in one of our generatorsor in one of our transmission lines. Perhaps we ought to be starting to pay a little more attention to $20 million in maintenance for our human capital." ~ Ken Webb

Until recently we have merely been tinkering with "Good" and "Bad" employee health costs. Now we can get down to business with the mother lode of health costs: the "Ugly" costs of eroded employee wellbeing...the opportunity costs of lost productivity, innovation, and resilience.

Since my baptism with the Service Profit Chain and Balanced Scorecard, I have finally been able to put numbers to the opportunity costs of health.

The message of the 90's was, "You should do this...it's the right thing to do." Framed by the Balanced Scorecard and War for Talent, the message of the new millennium for employee wellbeing is, "You can't afford NOT to do this!"