Productivity and Health: Best Practices for Better Measures of Productivity

Abstract

This article supports the Integrated Benefits Institute consensus statements on productivity, underscoring the need to develop a conceptual framework of productivity measurement that guides the maturation of instruments and sets forth recommendations for their application consistent with the descriptive, comparative, and evaluative functions that foster health, well-being, and work performance.

Productivity and Health

“…While some uncertainty remains about the validity of self-report measures of productivity impairment, it is evident to more employers that measuring and managing the health of their workforce are central to keeping their companies competitive. Schwartz and Riedel 24 have outlined three primary assessment functions of productivity measurement (ie, descriptive, comparative, evaluative). The purpose of this study was to demonstrate the utility of each of these functions using real world data collected via a health risk assessment deployed to a large and diverse sample of employees and health plan members.…”

“…These methods are relatively inexpensive, easy to administer, and allow the employer to gather a large amount of productivity data on their workforce. Based on 10 consensus statements regarding the current state and future direction of health and productivity management, 12 Schwartz and Riedel 24 have articulated three primary functions for the use of self-report measures of productivity; descriptive, comparative, and evaluative measurement. Descriptive measurement determines the degree to which health status impacts performance.…”

The Functional Well-Being Scale: A measure of functioning loss due to well-being-related barriers

“…Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to determine the relationships between the WBA-F and self-reported indices of chronic health conditions, health behavior risks, quality of overall health and physical health, and levels of emotional health and life evaluation. This type of analysis provided evidence of construct validity and has been identified as the most fundamental of best practices for developing measures of productivity (Schwartz and Riedel, 2010).…”

Validation of a measure of health-related production loss: construct validity and responsiveness - a cohort study

“…The practical concern, however, has been how lost production due to ill health is measured [ 3 , 4 ]. Objective methods, often adopting computer-based measurements of health-related production losses, have been used sparingly due to the lack of generalizability of outcomes and to time constraints on implementation [ 5 ].…”

“…The implication of these challenges, from the employer’s perspective, is that measuring production loss is mired in uncertainty as to which measure will accurately capture the losses. To be useful, a measuring instrument must therefore: 1) determine if and to what extent health and work environment problems affect employee performance; 2) be possible to use when evaluating change over time as part of an intervention evaluation [ 3 ]; and 3) be capable of measuring the costs arising from the particular problem. Such a tool, of course, needs to be tested for its validity and reliability.…”