TABLE 6.

Health and Productivity at Work

Study	Key Findings
Berndt et al. 1998	Medically efficacious treatments for depression positively affect workplace productivity.
	The at-work performance of chronically depressed patients improves as the severity of their depressive symptoms is reduced. Responses to each of the six work performance questions indicate considerable improvement. A composite measure shows a “compelling bivariate relationship.” Less severe depression is associated with better work performance. Change in perceived work status is moderately reduced as baseline depressive status becomes more severe. The most significant limitation is that measures of work performance are subjective: “We refrain from offering any quantitative estimate of how much ‘real’ work productivity improves as depressive severity is reduced.”
Burton et al. 1999	Overall health risk status appears to be related to the likelihood of meeting a productivity standard, but the relationship is not statistically significant. Some specific health risks were significantly related to a failure to attain the productivity standard and were associated with work hours lost because of absence due to illness, including “general distress,” diabetes, and body mass index. Most of the productivity loss was not due to absence, but to failure to meet the productivity standard, but this pattern varied across health risks.
Burton et al. 2001	A significant correlation was observed between an increase in pollen counts and a decrease in productivity for workers with allergies. Compared with workers without allergies, employees with allergies who reported using no medication showed a 10% decrease in productivity. No differences were observed among workers with allergies who used different types of medications, although the medication groups were significantly more productive than the no-medication group. The expected lowered productivity of those workers with allergies who used sedating antihistamines may have been offset by their relatively less severe symptoms and by the nature of the job and the productivity measures used.