To give a bit of perspective, most organizations are spending millions of dollars to gain LEED certification for their buildings.  The primary issue in regards to LEED is saving energy.  While it is a good and noble cause, the annual cost a company spends on energy is about 1%.  The total annual cost spent on employees is about 90%². Where will efforts to improve operations have the most positive impact on the corporate bottom line?

In the past, knowledge worker productivity has been very difficult to measure from work product as there can be a gulf between quality and quantity of work product as well as each different job can have very different specifics.  Each job would need to be engineered with very specific benchmarks on both quantity and quality in order to gauge total productivity.

The current state of company focus on improving employee productivity, health and prevention efforts is based on reducing high health care costs.   As a result, companies have instituted wellness programs in order to improve overall employee health in an attempt to bring down health care costs.  Wellness programs are important but in many cases, companies feel helpless as they find that there is little they can do to control the factors impacting overall employee health.   What our research has found is that one very large component of health care costs is actually within direct corporate control and provides a substantial opportunity to realize sustainable healthcare cost reductions and significantly raising overall productivity.

“The details of the medical expenses of the WRMSD (work-related musculoskeletal disorder) cases suggest that very high proportions of the medical visits and procedures were paid for either by general health insurance or out of pocket. “ Source: The Economic and Social Consequences of Work-related Musculoskeletal Disorders: The Connecticut Upper-Extremity Surveillance Project (CUSP). This study was provided through Dr. Casey Chosewood of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

That means that the other 89% of the claims were handled in a different manner than through workers’ compensation.  In other words, many (if not most) of the WRMSDs or ergonomics related injuries occurring are being handled through the corporate health insurance system and are significantly raising program costs.  The big concern of injuries being handled in this manner is as employees go through the health insurance system, they are essentially unmanaged from a work perspective and little if anything is known much less tracked and managed about their real cost to the organization.  When the impact of these injuries and general discomfort in the organization is studied in detail, the cost of the resulting lost productivity is significantly larger than any other cost including medical, equipment and even facilities.

People costs are by far the largest organizational expense and productivity is the key metric. While LEED is “all the rage” right now and is important, take a hard look at how you are managing productivity of your work force, identify the factors impeding worker productivity and then correct them.  It will make a much larger impact on your bottom line than LEED certificate.