Helping workers with substance use disorders cuts costs: NSC
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Employers can save an average of $8,500 in turnover, replacement and health care costs by supporting workers suffering from substance use disorders, according to a study released Wednesday by the National Safety Council.
Itasca, Illinois-based NSC and the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center, a nonpartisan research organization now known as NORC, in 2017 created a substance use cost calculator to estimate the prevalence of substance use disorders among employees and their dependents and the costs associated with treatment.
Conducting a new analysis, the researchers found that the costs to employers for each worker with untreated substance use disorder have risen 30% in three years, with employers spending an average of $8,817 annually on each employee with an untreated disorder.
The researchers also found that employer-initiated treatment tended to be more successful than treatment initiated by friends or family and that workers in recovery miss 12.7 fewer workdays on average than those with untreated disorders and 3.6 fewer days than the average employee.
The NORC and NSC analysis also found that one in 12 workers has an untreated substance use disorder, and that workers in construction, mining and service industries, as well as jobs with a higher percentage of male workers, tend to have the highest rates of the disorder
The researchers noted that workers in recovery take eight days off each year, on average, compared with more than 11 days taken off annually by workers without substance use disorders. They also tend to stay in jobs longer, are less likely to be hospitalized and have fewer primary care visits.
