Human Resource Management

Human Resource Management

Table of Contents

Contents

INTRODUCTION3

BODY: DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS3

Research Article Summary4

Business Article Summary8

CONCLUSION15

REFERENCES16

Harvard Research Paper

Introduction

Most organizations use human capital to fulfill the function of producing, selling, servicing and supporting to achieve their corporate goals - whether financial or non-financial in nature. When the ability of human capital becomes impaired - productivity in the organization will ultimately decline (Albrecht 2003). Numerous studies have attempted to quantify the reduction in productivity due to health issues.

There are two main constructs of health related productivity. The first is when the employee is physically not at work. This is referred to as absenteeism. Absenteeism is typically easy to quantify through payroll records, however a modern trend in organizations is for paid time off, regardless whether the employee is ill, on vacation or just needs a 'mental health' day (Cooper 2001). This movement toward “combined personal time off” makes it more difficult to isolate the impact of health related absenteeism.

Body: Discussion and Analysis

Research Article Summary

Even harder to measure than absenteeism is when an employee is physically at the work site but is not performing to full capacity. This phenomenon is referred to as 'presenteeism', that is, the employee is at work but there is some condition that is preventing the employee from being fully engaged in their assigned work.

Purpose of the Research

There are a lot of reasons that a person may be absent from work or may not be performing at a satisfactory level while at work. These may range from illness, child-care responsibilities and family issues to perhaps over-indulgence the previous evening (Cook 1980).

Research

The following research has been carried out in Newzealnd yealy 2007.

Relation of Research to Topic

As mentioned earlier, there has been significant work done on the recognition that absenteeism and presenteeism exist, and various models have attempted to calculate the financial impact on the business entity. However, there has been little evidence of a solution to the productivity problem that can positively impact the return on investment (Chartered Institute of Personnel Development 2007). That is, until now.

Practical Implications of the Article

HealthMedia, Inc, the global leader in scalable behavior change interventions for wellness, disease management, behavioral health and medication adherence, has been collecting productivity data from program participants for the last two years. By imbedding questions derived from the Work Productivity and Activity Impairment (WPAI) instrument into its program assessments, HealthMedia has been able to quantify two critical components of the productivity puzzle (Chartered Institute of Personnel Development 2004).

First, using data from its health risk assessment, HealthMedia has quantified the baseline productivity impairment that various health related conditions can have on an organization.

Second, HealthMedia has been able to calculate the projected impact that its behavior change interventions have on improving productivity - both in the areas of absenteeism and presenteeism.

The results for population impairment are based on more than a quarter of a million people who have answered the productivity questions in the health risk assessment - HealthMedia® Succeed™. The WPAI productivity instrument asks about hours missed from work due to health ...