STUDY FINDS INVESTING IN EMPLOYEE WELLNESS PAYS DIVIDENDS
From: Fulbright Australia
A new study led by an Adelaide-based Fulbright Scholar has found that every dollar invested in programs that support and nurture employee mental health and wellness generated over three dollars of benefits through improving staff absenteeism and job performance.
Employee assistance programs (EAPs), voluntary workplace-based counselling programs, are widespread across industrialized countries, including the U.S., Canada, and Australia. Today, a team of researchers from the U.S. and Australia published the first known controlled economic evaluation of an EAP. This study analyzed the EAP of the Department for Education of the State of South Australia, which serves 27,753 employees and their dependents.
Specifically, the article calculated that these economic benefits to the Department were worth $1,021.48 for each employee receiving counselling, or 3.34 times their cost ($306.09), a highly favorable result.