Employer-sponsored health insurance is the most widely spread form of medical coverage in the United States. Substantial portion of the premiums’ costs is covered by employers, thus contributing to labor costs for organizations. Although worker health and well-being have become increasingly important for businesses, most of them do not see a direct link between their health and well-being investments and work output and quality of work of their employees. This study aimed to estimate the cost of inefficiencies at work with emphasis on their internal causes, i.e., sick-related absenteeism and distraction at work. With data from 3,258 employees (2,775 office and 483 manufacturing) from a major US manufacturer with revenue of $6 billion, monetary loss in productivity due to sick-related absenteeism and distraction among office and factory floor employees was assessed. The Work Productivity and Activity Impairment scale and the Health-related Lost Productivity Time tool (both already validated) were used to estimate the cost of productivity loss. Survey data on health-related absenteeism and distraction time at work, together with company pay records, were used. A secondary analysis, using survey data collected from 615 Polish apparel factory workers at a major global brand complemented with their payroll records (absenteeism and salary), was conducted to validate the main findings. Results of the primary analysis indicated that annual productivity loss to the organization amounted to approximately $300 m. Distraction contributed to 93.6% of the annual productivity loss of the US manufacturer, while only 6.4% resulted from health-related absenteeism, implying that distraction at work cost this organization almost 15 times more than health related absenteeism, reducing the overall return on sales by over 6 pp. The secondary analysis corroborated the dominance of distraction induced productivity costs over the cost of health-related absenteeism. Evidence from the regression analysis conducted on cross-sectional data indicated that regardless of the type of work, work engagement and auditory privacy were evidently highly bound with productivity loss. For manufacturing workers, job security was also negatively correlated with productivity loss, while for office employees, better social relationships and lack of work-family conflict were positively associated with productivity. Despite being based on two case studies, our results are informative of the magnitude of distraction and health related productivity costs. They also show that workers with deficiencies in their well-being at work present a substantial opportunity for growth to companies in terms of reduced efficiency.

雇主赞助的健康保险是美国医疗保险中分布最广泛的形式。保费成本的很大一部分由雇主承担，因此构成了组织的人工成本。尽管工人的健康和福祉对企业已变得越来越重要，但大多数企业并未看到其健康与福祉投资，工作产出和员工的工作质量之间有直接联系。这项研究旨在估计效率低下的成本，重点是其内因，即与疾病相关的旷工和工作分心。根据美国一家主要制造商的3258名员工（2775名办公室和483名制造业）的数据，这些公司的收入为60亿美元，评估了因病缺勤以及办公室和工厂车间员工分心而导致的生产力金钱损失。使用工作生产率和活动障碍量表以及与健康相关的生产力损失时间工具（均已通过验证）来估算生产力损失的成本。使用了与健康相关的缺勤和工作分散时间的调查数据，以及公司的工资记录。使用从一个主要全球品牌的615位波兰服装工厂工人收集的调查数据以及他们的工资记录（旷工和薪水）进行了辅助分析，以验证主要结论。初步分析的结果表明，该组织每年的生产力损失约为3亿美元。分心导致93。美国制造商每年生产力损失的6％，而与健康相关的旷工造成的损失只有6.4％，这意味着该组织的工作分心导致的损失几乎是与健康相关的旷工的15倍，从而使整体销售回报降低了6 pp以上二级分析证实了分心导致的生产力成本高于与健康相关的旷工成本。对横截面数据进行回归分析的证据表明，无论工作类型如何，工作投入和听觉隐私显然都与生产力损失紧密相关。对于制造业工人而言，工作安全也与生产率下降呈负相关，而对于办公室雇员而言，良好的社会关系和缺乏工作与家庭的冲突与生产率呈正相关。尽管基于两个案例研究，我们的结果仍能为分心和与健康相关的生产力成本提供参考。他们还表明，工作效率低下的员工从效率降低的角度为公司发展提供了巨大的机会。