How to increase workplace productivity with a broad focus on employee health

Every company needs to understand the value of keeping its employees healthy. According to the Department of Labor, businesses spend $170 billion on costs associated with occupational injuries and illnesses, and that money has a direct effect on company profits.
Workplace injuries and illnesses cannot be eliminated, but the costs associated with them can be curtailed. One method that has traditionally been effective is an occupational medicine approach to the issues that surround workplace injuries and illnesses. But, is there an even better way?
“The goal of occupational medicine is largely straightforward,” says Leonard Eisenbeis, director of Clinical Health Operations for UPMC WorkPartners. “It is to keep a company’s employees healthy, to treat injuries effectively and to reduce a company’s number of lost work days. That is fine, but by using a total health management approach, you can go beyond that narrow focus of workplace health to concentrate more on overall prevention and wellness.”
Smart Business spoke with Eisenbeis about how to use the total health management approach to become more productive.
What is occupational medicine?
Occupational medicine is the prevention and treatment of occupational and environmental injury, illness and disability of workers. This includes prevention of injury caused by working conditions, and protecting workers from risks present in the workplace.
Occupational medicine is considered a subspecialty of preventive medicine because of its emphasis on prevention in regard to short- and long-term hazards in the workplace related to people and disease.
How does total health management differ?
Total health management looks at the employee from a broader perspective. Where occupational medicine is effective in treating injuries that occur on the job, total health management goes beyond that to look at the total health of an employee.
It is as interested in non-work-related health issues as it is in work-related health issues, since, in both cases, the result can be time away from work.
Total health management is a perspective that integrates occupational safety and health protection with health promotion to prevent worker injury and illness and to advance worker health and well-being.
It is broad-based and integrated, and includes issues related to protecting the safety and health of workers in the work environment, preserving human resources through employment practices, and promoting health and well-being for individual workers. Its goals include increasing the awareness and adoption of effective, integrated occupational safety, and health protection and promotion in the workplace. By creating workplace policies that promote integration of occupational safety and health protection and health promotion, it creates a culture of health.
Total health management is designed to address root causes of health issues that impact employees and their families because they ultimately impact the workplace as well.
What does having total health management mean?
The Institute for Health and Productivity Management defines health and productivity management as the integrated management of health and injury risks, chronic illness and disability to reduce employees’ total health-related costs, including direct medical expenditures, unnecessary absence from work and lost performance at work (presenteeism).
Unlike other workplace health promotion programs, an integrated approach addresses the entire spectrum of employee health needs including disease management, disease prevention, wellness and health promotion, health assessment, disability management and absence management.
In short, it’s a comprehensive approach to managing the health, well-being and productivity of employees.
Does total health management work?

Studies have shown that companies that approach employee health from a problem-solving approach, rather than just a cost-containment approach, can be successful in reducing employees’ lost time. It also has been shown that the longer a total health management strategic approach is in place, the greater its impact over time.

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