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The key to improving worker health is in our hands, literally. That's right: Making hand hygiene products easily available in the workplace can dramatically improve employee health – and, consequently, bolster productivity while keeping health care spending down.
What's more, adding such programs to the office can keep workers happy through good health. As the chief health officer for 2,500 employees at Medical Mutual of Ohio, I've seen this firsthand.
Offices are hotbeds for maladies such as colds and the flu. Employees can pass their germs to one another simply by touching a doorknob, copy machine button or coffee pot handle. Nearly one of every four people goes to work when sick. As a result, a typical office desk holds about 400 times as many germs as found on a standard toilet seat – more than 10 million bacteria.
This spread of germs can significantly impact a company's health care costs and productivity. Workplace illness costs the U.S. economy an estimated $576 billion a year – about 40 percent of which is due to lost productivity from sick employees who either stay home or those who come to work but perform poorly
As a result, companies are doling out big sums to keep their workers healthy. About half of all U.S. companies with 50 or more workers offer some kind of workplace wellness program. Last year, wellness spending per employee hit nearly $700 on average. Unsurprisingly, the workplace wellness industry is valued at an estimated $6 billion a year. No doubt such programs are having a positive effect, and companies big enough to afford them should continue them while monitoring what works.
But for a mere fraction of the cost, employers can implement a comprehensive hand hygiene program and outfit their offices and workspaces with hand sanitizer products and dispensers. That would allow workers to clean their hands throughout the day -- an important opportunity since health experts report that more than 80 percent of illnesses can be transmitted by one's hands.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization, hand sanitizer is one of the best tools available to avoid getting sick and spreading germs. That's because of the efficacy of alcohol-based hand sanitizers in rapidly reducing illness-causing bacteria on hands.
New research confirms these benefits. My company, recently teamed up with GOJO Industries, a manufactuer of hand sanitizer, to study the effects of hand sanitizer use in highly populated office buildings. We installed hand-sanitizing stations in high-traffic common areas, conference rooms and break rooms, and gave hand sanitizer bottles and hand sanitizing wipes to each individual. That provided them the opportunity to clean and sanitize their hands at key moments throughout the day.
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By Kathy Golovan
Source: BBC
