When Jeff arrived back at the office, he spent 15 minutes reading Latisha’s proposal to work on a wellness program. He found the work impressive and insightful. If only more of his employees had the same drive, initiative, and analytical skills as Latisha, thought Jeff, Eastmond would be far more successful. If Latisha kept up this level of analysis in her work, Jeff would definitely find a way to employ her full-time at Eastmond. Her thorough and thoughtful approach to this business problem showed she could excel in many of the entry-level management positions at the company.11

However, Jeff wasn’t quite ready to move forward on implementing her plan. He was concerned about the expense. Although he trusted the estimates on returns, he was worried about the cash investments needed in the first few years before Eastmond would see returns. Before Latisha worked on a plan, he wanted her to do some more background work and investigate a more modest investment. He was especially interested in learning more about how a disease management program could impact the company.

Jeff approached Latisha and explained what he wanted, and he asked her to write a brief report similar to the one she had already done.

He said, “I’d like you to focus on just the biggest problems. You know, programs to help with diabetes or heart health. Maybe we could help employees lower their cholesterol levels and their blood pressure. I’m thinking that we should learn how we can get the biggest bang for our buck—focus on say four or five of the costliest health problems and go from there. Also, I’d like to get a sense of the best way to prioritize our limited dollars to invest in disease management.”

“If you’re looking for some specific interventions that can make the biggest difference,” Latisha answered, “we should start with stress. Stress costs us more in terms of health care costs and lower productivity than any other health care risk covered in a wellness or disease management program. Stress management programs are fairly inexpensive and deliver results pretty quickly.”

“Really?” he said. “Stress costs more than heart disease or diabetes? OK, then how about you focus on stress management programs for the next week or two and write up what you find out. We’ll go forward from there.”

Latisha spent the next week learning about corporate stress management programs. She learned the following:

• Health care costs of people suffering chronic, extreme stress are 46 percent higher than for those who are not.

• According to the American Medical Association, stress is as bad for your heart as smoking and high cholesterol.

• Forty percent of job turnover is due to stress.

• Stress reduction programs can have major impacts. In one company, 42 percent of 5,900 employees suffered moderate to severe stress. In fact, 80 percent of doctor visits for these employees were related to stress. After a stress reduction program, employee physician services dropped from $7.4 million annually to $5.3 million annually.

• Employees with various health risks directly increase health care costs to employers. For example, compared to employees with low health risks, employees with the following conditions significantly increase costs to the employer: depression (70.2 percent higher cost); stress (46.3 percent); glucose (34.8 percent); weight (21.4 percent); tobacco (19.7 percent); blood pressure (11.7 percent); exercise (10.4 percent).

• According to the Department of Health and Human Services, employees suffer the following risk factors: stress, 44 percent; overweight, 38 percent; use alcohol excessively, 31 percent; high cholesterol, 30 percent; have cardiovascular disease, 25 percent; don’t exercise, 24 percent; smoke, 21 percent; don’t wear seat belts, 20 percent; are asthmatic, 12 percent; are diabetic, 6 percent.

• One study showed the annual per-employee absenteeism costs for the following conditions as follows: stress, $136; weight issues, $70; tobacco use, $44; glucose problems, $29.

• The Canadian Institute of Stress showed the following results for corporate stress management programs: work stress: 32 percent improvement; work satisfaction: 38 percent improvement; absenteeism: 18 percent reduction; disability days: 52 percent reduction; grievances: 32 percent reduction; productivity: 7 percent improvement; quality measures: 13 percent improvement; work engagement: 62 percent improvement.

• Stress management programs are most effective when offered in conjunction with broad wellness programs.

• Setting up stress management programs is challenging. Other disease management programs are more easily defined in terms of who has conditions and how to treat them (i.e., diabetes, heart disease).

• Most employees do not enroll in stress management programs unless there are incentives.

• Stress management can be achieved through workplace policies that alleviate work and personal stress. Some companies have tried flextime, allowing work at home, child care initiatives, sick child care, and other incentives to help employees reduce stress and be more productive.

• Stress management can also involve training through workshops and professional coaching.

• Lisa estimates that hiring a full-time professional coach for the workplace would cost approximately $60,000 per year (salary plus benefits and other related costs). The coach would run workshops, distribute educational materials, and also offer one-to-one coaching in stress relief. The coach would be qualified to work on other wellness areas such as weight loss, exercise, and dietary improvements. Assuming that Eastmond offered $150 reductions on health care premiums per year, Lisa estimates the company could achieve 90 percent participation (about 175 employees) in a basic stress management program. She thinks it’s reasonable to assume that Eastmond could save about $500 per enrolled employee between health care and absenteeism costs.

Analyze Latisha’s audience and summarize into a paragraph, Make sure to review benefits and constraints, values and priorities, personal credibility with the audience, anticipated reactions, and secondary audience.