Workers with obesity cost more but deserve fair treatment

Unless your business is training swim suit models, You probably have a good share of obese and overweight workers on your payroll. All in all, these people are costing businesses a lot of money—an estimated $13 billion per year in the U.S.

Overweight workers use significantly more healthcare services. In one study, Dallas city workers of normal weight had total health costs per year of about $114 per worker compared with healthcare costs for overweight employees of $573 and for obese employees an average of $620.

Nearly half of us weigh too much. For every 100 employees at your business, odds are that between 20 and 35 of them would be classified as obese. Additional health costs could run from $10,000 to $15,000 or more per year for these employees. If your business is in the service rather than the manufacturing sector, you probably have an even higher ratio of overweight employees because sedentary workers tend to weigh more than those whose work involves intense physical activity.

What can you do about it?

With few exceptions, you can't dismiss workers or refuse to hire them for being overweight. You wouldn't want to fire everyone who weighs too much even if you could because your overweight workers are often the most productive members of your work team.

Here are some key points to keep in mind as you think about ways to build a healthier workforce when you have overweight and obese employees on your payroll.

• Adopt a cooperative, not an adversarial role when dealing with overweight employees.
• Let them know that you’re all on the same side in the battle.
• Emphasize health more than weight. A thin employee can be as weak and vulnerable to sickness as an extremely overweight one. Fat or thin, we all need to improve our health.
• Remember that obesity is covered under the American Disability Act. Make sure your business accommodates your overweight employees.

More about...

Reliable resources for work-related health information

Blogs for a safe and healthy workplace

Free tools for your health and safety programs

Directory of health and safety info on the Web from JG and HealthWorks

How we can help and who we are

THINKING POINTS

The wages of morbidly obese women are 24% less than those of normal-weight women. American Obesity Association.

Children as young as three have negative feelings about overweight playmates. Yale University study.

We need to fight obesity, not fat people," declares Dr. Marlene Schwartz of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders.

Obesity appears to be a greater factor than inactivity in raising the risk of Type II diabetes among women. Medline Plus