Unlocking the ‘productivity premium’ in workplace wellness

The most expensive health challenge in any Australian workplace is not the one that gets reported. It is the one the employee decides to manage alone, in silence, writes Charlene Loo.

Managers are leading a workforce that is navigating invisible struggles. At one desk sits an older employee working into their sixties, quietly managing a chronic physical condition that previous generations dealt with in retirement. At the next desk, a younger employee is dealing with a pre-existing mental health challenge, a reality that now affects nearly four in ten young Australians. Others are working while experiencing menopause or difficult menstruation, for example.

Most organisations are already managing both of those realities, whether they have a strategy for either or not. This struggle is a massive drain on corporate performance, with the Australian Productivity Commission warning that it costs Australia up to $39 billion in lost participation and productivity every year.

But when an employee is struggling, the impact to a business is less about the exact diagnosis than whether that employee feels safe enough to speak up and ask for support or adjustments. Too many employees don’t. For them, the default is still self-preservation through silence.

Why silence wins

We are navigating a culture in which three-quarters of employees do not feel confident raising a mental health challenge with their line manager, according to a recent BSI survey. When it comes to raising issues with HR or team directors, the figures are lower still. Many employees choose to say nothing, even though more than half believe their mental health challenges are impacting their performance and career progression.

So, they muddle on, and the business quietly absorbs the operational drag.

When people hide their struggles, they don’t just carry on. Some work, but at reduced capacity, with higher rates of presenteeism. Others take longer, unplanned absences that are more difficult to plan around. When employees believe no support is available, average workplace absence rates for physical and mental health issues increase significantly. Others quit or find a new role elsewhere. Whatever path is taken, the outcome is bad for the individual and the employer.

And because fear prevents early intervention, manageable health challenges are left to escalate in secret. This silence compounds, contributing to a 161 per cent increase in Australian psychological injury claims over the past decade, with a median recovery time of 35 weeks. That is nearly nine months of lost productivity and disruption, nearly five times longer than for a physical injury.

BSI’s research shows that replacing this fear with trust unlocks a distinct confidence productivity premium. By giving employees the confidence to speak up early, organisations in the UK reclaim £1,590 more (about $3,066 AUD) per employee annually for physical health challenges and £410 more ($790 AUD) per employee annually for psychological health challenges.

The limits of a compliance-driven wellbeing culture

This is the costly unaddressed gap between wellbeing provision and culture. While many organisations are investing in employee assistance programs, mental health and wellness apps, and compliance-driven policies, productivity continues to slide. Perhaps it is because they are investing in safety nets rather than intervening early, fixing the ground level where people actually fall.

Fixing this isn’t a matter of drafting another policy. Indeed, the standards are there to guide employers already. It requires us to view trust not as a human resource value, but as an operational capability.

Trust is won or lost in the quiet, daily interactions between line managers and their teams. It is built when a manager responds to a health or wellbeing issue with a practical solution rather than panic, judgment, or hope it will go away.

When that trust exists, the solutions can be remarkably simple. It might look like a temporary shift in starting times to accommodate medical appointments, a reshuffle of tasks to ease a bottleneck, or a quieter desk away from the noise. Where these support systems are genuinely visible and trusted, absence rates notably drop.

The most resilient organisations are creating a culture in which people can come forward when they feel ready. It’s not that employers have to be good at reading between the lines. Acting early in these cases makes all the difference.

Overcoming the productivity bottleneck

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australia’s labour productivity grew by just 0.3 per cent last quarter, well below the long-run average. There is no single remedy for that. But part of what sits inside that number is a workforce absorbing health challenges quietly and not asking for small adjustments where needed, often working below its potential and turning over faster than it should.

The organisations fostering genuine cultures of trust where employees feel confident to speak openly about their health and wellbeing are not simply doing the right thing by their people. They are doing better for their business and the economy overall.

Charlene Loo is the managing director of BSI Australia.

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