January 5, 2016
CHICAGO, IL, Jan. 6, 2016 – A new study sponsored by UL’s Integrated Health and Safety Institute (IHSI) and published in this month’s issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (JOEM), adds to the growing evidence that a healthy and safe workforce correlates with a company’s performance and its ability to provide positive returns to shareholders.
Lead author Raymond Fabius, MD, co-founder of HealthNEXT, and colleagues studied the stock market performance of companies that had applied for or received the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine’s (ACOEM) Corporate Health Achievement Award (CHAA), which annually recognizes the healthiest and safest organizations in North America. To be considered for the CHAA, organizations must be engaged in measurable efforts to reduce health and safety risks among their employees.
The authors tracked the stock market performance of 17 CHAA applicants and recipients recognized for excellence in their health and/or safety programs using six investment modeling scenarios. The study’s results suggest that employers that invest significantly in health and safety programming are likely to have superior financial performance in the marketplace. Over the study’s 13-year period, the hypothetical investment returns for CHAA companies were significantly higher than average S&P 500 returns – as much as triple in some of the scenarios. In the best-performing scenario, the CHAA companies achieved a 333% return, compared to an S&P return of 105% during the same period. In the lowest-performing scenario, the CHAA companies achieved a 204% return, compared to an S&P return of 105% during the same period.
“The CHAA study supplements the growing body of research establishing correlation between a true culture of health, safety and well-being for workers and an organization’s competitive advantage in the marketplace,” said Todd Hohn, IHSI’s global director. “UL’s Integrated Health and Safety Institute aims to continue building on this research to encourage mainstream adoption of integrated health and safety programs to improve the effectiveness and economic benefit of both programs.”
UL’s IHSI is publishing a standard for integrating health and safety in the workplace to offer organizations the guidance necessary to fully integrate their health and safety programs, maximizing employees’ health and productivity, while improving both programs’ effectiveness and reducing costs. This standard and the CHAA study build on UL and ACOEM’s development of a framework for integrated health and safety and the introduction of an Integrated Health and Safety Index, published in JOEM’s May 2015 issue.
The CHAA study, titled “Tracking the Market Performance of Companies That Integrate a Culture of Health and Safety: An Assessment of Corporate Health Achievement Award Applicants,” is one of three studies featured in a special section of the January issue of JOEM highlighting the impact health and safety programs may have on a company’s investment value. The Health Project and the Health Enhancement Research Organization (HERO) conducted two additional studies pulling from different populations and used slightly differing methodologies and timeframes. The Health Project and HERO studies also support the finding that financially sound, high-performing companies invest in employee health and safety.
View the CHAA study in the January 2016 issue of JOEM at http://journals.lww.com/joem/Abstract/2016/01000/Tracking_the_Market_Performance_of_Companies_That.2.aspx.