What do Investments in Machinery and Equipment and Prevention Programs have in Common?

I have often wondered why HR departments and medical professionals shy away from trying to quantify the ROI of investments in prevention programs. Is it simply a matter of not being acquainted with financial calculation tools during their academic education? Possibly. Could it be that comparing the maintenance of a car with the maintenance of the human body is philosophically inconsistent, and maybe most would consider it demeaning to compare the human body with a car. After all a car is a car and reducing blood pressure helps to save a human life. How does one compare a car with a life?

Nevertheless, nowadays it is difficult to obtain approval of prevention programs without some type of ROI calculation. Leaving aside philosophical differences, the good news is that the same methodology used in deciding to fix a car is used to decide to invest in a prevention program. If I leave philosophy aside for a minute, and think like an economist, it is quite possible to compare both. The human body is far more complex than a car and has many more moving parts.

Whereas a mechanic can fix a car, it takes many “specialized mechanics”, with many years of education to fix a human body. Furthermore, the parts of the human body are interrelated and sometimes not even understood. That explains why there are literally hundreds of types of prevention programs compared to taking your car to a single dealer to get it repaired. Each prevention program “tinkers” with one or more body parts, leaving other parts to survive on their own.

Read more: How to quantify productivity cost savings from wellbeing programs?

Take care of a prevention program is like looking after of machine

Let´s continue with the analogy. If an important car part malfunctions, the car stops. Its productivity goes to zero. However, with human beings, if an important component breaks down (say with back pain), other parts continue to function (the mind functions) but with less productivity. With a car, either it works or does not, whereas someone with anxiety or depression gives the appearance of productivity (after all, they are at their desk), but the mind does not work on all “cylinders”.

So, if we can admit that humans have productivity (few would doubt that), it become a question of how to measure the impact of physical and psychological conditions on productivity, and how a specific prevention program impacts the reduction of productivity. Also, if one admits that productivity exists, can I push my luck and claim that productivity varies by occupation and industry. So, if I had a data bases of productivity contributions by occupation and industry, I can be quite specific about the cost of conditions and how much they can be reduced by programs.

What should you do considerer in a prevention program?

Another consideration is that whereas some programs focus on a single condition (like vaccinations against Covid), other programs (like exercise) impact a multiple of conditions (CHD, Diabetes, Musculoskeletal).

So, one has to look at how the program (in this case, exercise) impacts the productivity costs of each of these three diseases. Obviously, there are other cost reductions associated with prevention programs (e.g., medical costs, turnover, disability, and accident costs) but I have just focused on productivity for now.

If you can calculate reduced costs, it is possible to calculate ROI. Our website contains the specific financial calculations. Obviously, there are other non-quantifiable benefits from having healthy bodies and minds, such as happiness and fulfillment, but luckily the ROI´s generated from just increased productivity are more than sufficient to obtain approval of your programs. The rest is gravy.