The Global Impact of Mental Health on Productivity is Increasing
What Can Businesses Do About It?
In their 2022 review, de Oliveira et al. defined absenteeism as “more missed days from work” and presenteeism as “decreased productivity at work”. There is now a mounting pile of published papers worldwide proving the link and the academic consensus seems clear. We can gather this from just a brief look at some of them. For example, both Hilton et al. (2010) and Bubonya et al. (2016) found that workers with greater levels of psychological distress had lower productivity. More specifically, Toyoshima et al. (2020) found that cognitive impairment and presenteeism were higher among workers in poor mental health, while Bannerjee et al. (2017) found a strong link between the number of weeks worked, labour force participation and absenteeism. To look at this another way, both Uribe et al. (2017) and Chong et al (2012) found that workers with better mental health had a lower probability of absenteeism and fewer hours of presenteeism per month.
This will not be news to anyone who is involved in the daily running of a business. When you have less of your workforce available on any given day, it has a very obvious cost. Not only that, but it’s also obvious how it is detrimental to lose hours of productive work when your workforce have reduced capabilities.
The global economic burden of mental illness is estimated to hit $6.1 trillion in 2030. Most of this cost will be due to lost productivity, which can be analysed as absenteeism and presenteeism.
So, what can we do about this?
Interestingly, we can find some suggestions in the studies themselves. Bubonya et al. (2016) found that initiatives that help workers manage and limit job stress were promising at improving productivity. Furthermore, they also found that increased job control could help reduce absenteeism. Indeed, Bryan et al. (2020) found that conducive working conditions, such as having autonomy over work tasks, can help mitigate presenteeism.
It’s not just management strategies that can help. As we’ve covered in our more in-depth article here, your workplace surroundings can have a massive impact on your mental health. In particular, research has shown that everything from your auditory environment to lighting has a real, tangible effect on your psychology and as a result, on your ability to work. We have also discussed here some tangible things that have a real impact on the productivity of your workspace.
“Your workplace surroundings can have a massive impact on your mental health”
Every year, a huge number of hours, even days are lost to reduced mental health and its impact on the workforce’s capabilities, with a very tangible cost of this reduced productivity to the economy. The weight of research over the last couple of decades, along with the real experience of anyone involved in business, has proved the link between mental health and productivity to be undeniable. Knowing this, the question we face is: what can we do about it?