When social ills arrive at work

Alcoholism. Drug abuse. Domestic violence. The consequences inevitably show up on the job, whether it's a day missed for a hospital stay or shoddy work because of a hangover.

But these problems are often hidden from employers - along with the costs to their business.

That's why researchers have decided to step in with some hard numbers. Their aim: to show corporate leaders that giving employees access to confidential screening, counseling, and treatment wouldn't just be altruistic - it is likely to save them money.

One such initiative is the Alcohol Cost Calculator - a free tool placed online earlier this month by a group at the George Washington University Medical Center. It crunches data for 10 industries based on the number of employees plugged in (and can be found at www.alcoholcostcalculator.org).

On the domestic-violence front, a three-year study beginning this summer at the University of Arkansas will measure the costs associated with victims and batterers.

The hope is to raise awareness with these numbers, an important first step that could deepen discussion of how workplaces can be part of the solution.

"Everyone knows that we have underfunded coverage for behavior health issues," says Becky Cherney, who chairs the National Business Coalition on Health. But the problem has been hard to quantify, and the indirect costs have been "the missing piece," she says. "Alcohol is a perfect example. What does it cost in absenteeism? What does it cost in social capital?"

Problem drinkers make up 7.4 percent of the workforce, take a total of 51 million extra sick days, and rack up $26 billion in healthcare costs, according to the GWU project, Ensuring Solutions to Alcohol Problems.

The cost calculator brings those numbers down to a scale that's easier for individual company executives to get their heads around.

A company with 1,000 employees in the manufacturing sector, for instance, is likely to have 65 employees and 127 employee family members who are problem drinkers. They account for 541 days of lost work, 53 extra nights in the hospital, and $22,708 worth of emergency-room visits. The numbers are based on an analysis of federal health and substance-abuse surveys of more than 50,000 adults.

Ensuring Solutions also offers suggestions (and supporting statistics) for how companies can help people turn around drinking problems, or catch them in their early phases.

"We have extremely effective, well-researched treatments for alcohol-use and alcohol-abuse disorders, so these are terrific places for companies to look when they are feeling the pressure of rapidly increasing health premiums and the pressure to increase productivity," says Eric Goplerud, director of Ensuring Solutions.

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