Obese Follow-up

Last week I wrote about how standards had changed for obesity. I mentioned there is plenty of data demonstrating obese workers are not as productive as other employees. CCH reported on one of those surveys this week.

Employees who are moderately to extremely obese are less productive on the job. This is the conclusion of a study in the January Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. This occurs even when you compare these folks compared to overweight or mildly obese workers. (I never realized you could have so many classifications of obese. It sounds like an overweight government standard.)

PLEASE NOTE: In this study researchers measured various aspects of productivity in a random sample of 341 manufacturing employees. Maybe the productivity loss is less for desk jockeys…

The quick facts:

• Most of the workers were overweight or obese, including a 23 percent rate of mild obesity and a 13 percent rate of moderate to extreme obesity.
• Another 43 percent of workers were classified as overweight but not obese.
• Workers with moderate to extreme obesity had the greatest health-related limitations at work. Specifically, moderately to extremely obese workers had limitations in time needed to complete work tasks and ability to meet physical work demands. These limitations were significantly greater than in the overweight or mildly obese groups.
• Health-related losses in productivity averaged 4.2 percent for workers with moderate to severe obesity, 1.8 percent higher than for all other employees.
• Employees with moderate to extreme obesity also had increased health-related absenteeism compared with other workers.

It's up to you. Workplace programs targeting obesity, especially among the most obese workers, can help to reduce costs due to lost productivity; even modest weight loss could result in hundreds of dollars of improved productivity costs per worker each year, the study’s authors conclude.

And I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough on the topic of obesity for 2008. At least now you have the facts. I’m gonna go exercise…