CHB 2.4: How are employees affected?

Without doubt, employees are the most valuable asset of a company. If employees perform well, so will the company. Hence, it is of considerable interest to examine factors that may impact employees’ performance. One factor their performance depends on is their individual productivity, though, an employee is only able to perform well and be productive if their health and wellbeing is at ‘normal’ levels (WHO, 2018). Thereafter, employee performance is largely dependent on their physical and mental health. Indeed, as reported in recent research, the manifestation of conditions, e.g. pain as a result of MSKd, may impact their participation in daily and working life (Woolf & Akesson, 2020). Further, next to MSKd, mental disorders such as depression and burnout are representing a large economic burden (Briggs et al., 2020), too, being amongst the main causes for illnesses and absences (Beroepsziekten, 2020; Volksgezondheidenzorg, 2020). It has become obvious that due to remote working following COVID-19 confinements and its inherent consequences, employee health – both physically and mentally – are at strong risk. Further, as remote working is likely to persist in the future for an unforeseeable time, employee health will continue to be impaired further. As a consequence, employees may develop complaints that will negatively affect their physical and mental health and therefore their productivity and performance in the short-term. If complaints continue to develop while health continues to deteriorate, long-term illnesses and absences may be a likely outcome. Further, considering the dependency of companies’ success on well-performing healthy employees, overall corporate performance may be at risk as revenue would be lost and costs for health care increase.