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The authors ask you:
Work-related stress is recognized as an important risk factor for injuries and illnesses in and out of the workplace, across all industry sectors, including construction. However, there is an absence of reliable data on the economic costs associated with stressful working conditions borne by workers and their families, organizations, and the society in general. Information of this nature is important for motivating interventions and evaluating results of interventions. The current study examines current evidence and knowledge gaps on economic costs associated with work stress and develops a plan for a comprehensive cost analysis. Apart from estimating the societal costs associated with work stress, the study also identifies the various economic and financial components that can be incorporated to build a successful cost assessment tool from an individual organization’s perspective. This will provide the much needed business case for prevention of stress at the workplace.
The Human Capital Approach identifies incidence or prevalence based direct (medical and health expenditure) and indirect (reduced productivity) costs from workers’ compensation claims, health care utilization data and productivity loss data. Previous endeavours like that of Greenberg et al. (1993) follow this approach to measure costs of depression in 1990 that includes direct costs of medical care, mortality and morbidity. Also, Goetzel (2003) and Webster & Bergman (1999) compared health expenses and duration of illness of a population with and without psychological disorders. A related approach is followed in the context of other nations by Cooper et al, 1996; Levi & Lunde-Jensen, 1995, Madhu Kalia, 2002, and in the U.S context by Ravi Tangri 2004. The prevalence of work stress however remained unattended in these studies as they rely on claims based data which are often underreported and fail to estimate the true incidence. In the present cost of illness study, prevalence of stress and conditions attributable to stress is estimated separately and then aggregated to estimate the total cost.
The plan of this study is to survey the literature to gather evidences of costs
due to work-stress, to point out the gaps that exist in the current literature
- for example the failure to account for the comorbidity, to propose a comprehensive
methodology/study that will help in identifying the true economic burden of
work stress and stress related disorders from the organizational perspective,
and finally to estimate the societal burden of stress at work.
The NIOSH Quality of Work Life (QWL) provides the prevalence of stress data
while Market Scan Medstat gives the preliminary cost data. Decision Analysis
tool is used to structure stress related outcomes and the prior probabilities
are provided by previous literature. Identifying the cost components for a company
based tool is a challenge and stakeholder inputs will benefit the work immensely.
This project addresses the immediate objective of 1) examine the current literature and 2) come up with a synthesis of methodologies that can be used in analyzing economic burden of work related stress in the US. This will provide the initial groundwork for undertaking a comprehensive study that will analyze the economic costs of stress at the societal level and the economic burden posed to the employers. This work will provide the information needed to motivate workplace interventions by organizations to reduce stress at work as well as econometric methods that can be used to assess stress costs in organizations and evaluate interventions.
This developmental project should be seen as a preparatory ground work for
a comprehensive study of estimating economic burden of work related stress.
However, the project itself will result in outputs in the form of cost estimates,
journal articles that will summarize the literature on cost estimates of work-stress
and identified cost measurement methodologies for individual business use.
The World Health Organization’s Global Burden of Disease Survey estimates that mental disease, including stress related disorders, will be the second leading cause of disabilities by the year 2020. Quantification of true costs of work related stress and related injuries and illnesses rendered to the business and to the society as a whole may help to further interest among employers and policymakers in prevention programs. Economic analysis of stress is identified as an intermediate goal under strategic goal #1 (Assess… economic burden of occupational safety and health problems related to job stress ...) of the NIOSH Work Organization and Stress-Related Disorders Program, and relates also to strategic goals 1.2 and 1.3 of the NIOSH Economics coordinated emphasis area.
The ultimate goal is to fuel initiatives in prevention of stress at work place
through strategically pointing out the financial and economic loss from not
undertaking such initiatives and tools that can be used by organizations to
assess stress costs and evaluate interventions. The resultant estimates will
be of considerable value since they will provide the first systematic analysis
of the status of knowledge on the burden of job stress. This information will
be used by the research community, including NIOSH investigators, to design
future studies to better define the burden of stress at work. Also identifying
cost components for developing an organizational cost calculator will serve
as the precondition for making business cases. Stakeholder input is needed in
this identification process. Participants from large and small organizations
are invited to voice their opinions about the ‘work-stress cost components’
in their individual organizations and partnerships are sought after to share
their knowledge base.
The findings and conclusions in this poster are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Citations to Web sites external to NIOSH do not constitute NIOSH endorsement of the sponsoring organizations or their programs or products. Furthermore, NIOSH is not responsible for the content of these Web sites.
