“84% of North Americans say CEO’s should make Helping Employees with Depression in the Workplace a Key Human Resources Priority”
Ipsos Reid public opinion study, February 2007

“HR Executives Rank Mental Illness #1 for Effect on Indirect Costs”
Innerworkings: A Look at Mental Health in Today’s Workplace Survey, May 2007

A 2006 study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry found that an employee with depression averaged 27.2 lost workdays per annum from absence or poor functioning on the job, and an employee with bipolar disorder averaged 65.5 days.

It is clear that mental illness has a huge impact on employers. It costs them billions of dollars each year from decreased productivity and lost work days.

In the “Innerworkings” survey nearly two-thirds of the Human Resources respondents estimated that at any given time, 3% or less of their employees suffer from a mental illness, and one-quarter said less than 1%.”

From the American Journal of Psychiatry study the number is actually closer to 8.2%. The Innerworkings respondents are well off the mark.

What effect does this have? Clearly CEOs and Human Resources Managers need to focus more of their attention on this immense need. It is in everyone’s best interests.

If you need to convince an employer about the problem then a good way to do it is to point to the bottom line. A tool reserved just for this purpose is the Productivity Impact Model developed by the HSM Group.

The purpose of the model, or calculator, is to give a realistic picture of how depression impacts on a company’s profitability. It takes just a few steps to calculate the amount of time and money lost, and the great thing is that the assumptions underlying the model are based on prior research studies. It’s not wild, ballpark guessing.

How does it work?

Using a company’s size, industry, location, and age / gender breakdown, it estimates the number of people in the company with depression. Then by taking a range of values for workdays missed, total wages and benefits, and additional medical costs, it provides output for days lost across the company over a year, total “replacement” costs to cater for those lost days, and total extra direct medical costs.

The output is persuasive, and it would surely get the ball rolling if placed in the right hands.