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Today we follow on yesterday's post — a video interview that addressed the idea that “health and productivity management is emerging as the only health delivery model that can maximize employers’ return on their investment in workers’ health.”

One of the key concepts in the interview covered the costs of presenteeism and health as human capital. These ideas were explained further in a study published in the April issue of the International Journal of Health & Productivity (p.16).

The study is titled “The Value Proposition in Creating and Sustaining Healthy Human Capital.” It “proposes an improved precision technique” to augment the current value proposition of workplace wellness programs in addition to “costs avoided by treating the unhealthy.”

Key conclusion: “Incentivizing healthy employees to stay healthy has a far greater impact on direct costs, than simply attempting to reduce poor health status in a given population.”

Other important concepts include:

• “Employees who are not at their optimum level of health cannot perform to their full potential and will be less productive.”
• “The current value proposition can only justify the effectiveness of workplace wellness programs (WWP) with regard to costs avoided by treating the unhealthy. This study proposes an improved precision technique by using a simple three-category Markov mathematical model to predict population health dynamics.”
• “Investing in healthy human capital is analogous to preventive maintenance programs for a company’s physical assets, suggesting to leadership that keeping a healthy workforce healthy is a profitable human capital investment.”

Indeed, as the report states in its conclusion: “This study supports the proposition that in-vesting in the maintenance of the health of a workforce is a sound business strategy. There is significant value from investing in creating and sustaining healthy human capital. Furthermore, this study provides orga- nizational applications for policymakers and leaders to assist in calculating the absolute return on investment (ROI) in keeping employees healthy.”