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Problems in Today's Society
The increasing complexity of modern society with the accompanying breakdown in traditional values and structures creates a wide range of pressures and stressors that challenges each of us.
The high mobility of the nuclear family has put great distances between family members. Almost one half of today's marriages end in divorce. The search for personal privacy causes neighbors to be strangers. The "cashless" society creates a false sense of financial worth. The decreasing value of the Canadian dollar, rising real estate values, and increased taxes make first-time home ownership a financial burden or an unrealistic goal for many young couples.
At the workplace, economic restraints and technological changes have caused many companies to downsize their operations, restrain growth, or close up shop altogether. Bankruptcies of small businesses are at an alltime high. Job security is a thing of the past. Early or forced retirement is a new reality for the maturing worker.
The Human Factor
We live in stressful times. Stress from any of the problems mentioned above put a strain on a person's mental and physical well-being.
Moreover, these problems do not remain in the private realm of a person's life. People are employees, too, and they bring their stresses to work every day.
All too often, the human factor in an organization is forgotten or ignored. Yet, without people, an organization cannot function. Human resources, the most important investment a business makes, are a company's most important asset. And, because people at work experience problems to varying degrees, business pays for the cost through decreased productivity, increased absenteeism, turnover, on-thejob accidents, mistakes in judgment, increased insurance premiums, grievance, and disability.
Consider the following statistics published by the Ontario government:
In 1979, the cost of absenteeism in Canada was $49 billion, 25 times more than the economic loss attributed to labor disputes.
Research at Canada Life Assurance Company shows that the cost of hiring and training a new supervisory level of employee is about $20,000.
A U.S. study indicates that to replace a top executive can cost as much as $600,000 (Fitness Ontario 1983, p. 5).
Wellness
Healthy employees and those programs that promote their health can help reduce the trend toward ever increasing health benefit costs, absenteeism, and decreased productivity. What employer wouldn't want to reverse these trends? Companies invest in ongoing maintenance for machinery or equipment. As a company's most valuable asset, employees deserve a health maintenance effort greater than that for equipment.
Laurence Green, the well-regarded Johns Hopkins University scholar, has written the most widely accepted version of wellness: "Health promotion is any combination of health education and related organizational, economical or political interventions, designed to facilitate behavioural and environmental changes conducive to health" ( Goldbeck and Kiefhaber 1981, p. 20).
This chapter focuses on two forms of health promotion or wellness programs, employee assistance programs (EAP) and rehabilitation. At different ends of the wellness spectrum (EAPs are proactive and designed for the well person; rehabilitation is reactive and designed for the unwell person), they complement each other and are interactive. Together, they constitute a total, comprehensive maintenance program.
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