Health Benefits consultants can predict how many of your employees will be off work through illness.

They can also tell you the cost. It’s always high. And it sounds inevitable.

What the consultants can’t tell you is how many of your employees who show up to work suffer chronic symptoms that sap their energy, creativity and enthusiasm. Have you ever tried to calculate the costs of this lost productivity? It doesn’t reach your income statement and you may never know the cost.

The effect of debilitating illness of members of a company’s senior management is even more devastating.

When a single member of your leadership team is dragged down by chronic health issues or, unexpectedly, knocked out by a catastrophic health event, you are at risk – of disruption and of lost opportunity. Relate that risk to the cost of truly effective prevention-based screening – it’s a very high-return investment.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

A few companies are aggressively targeting the health of their executives and employees, reducing their exposure to risk and substantially avoiding those direct and hidden costs. Indeed, the few that are doing so really do understand the value of their human capital and the need to protect it.

Please read on.