How to add $100,000 to your bottom line

We have never lived in a more ‘abundant’ time: though there are more than 7 billion people on the planet, we have ‘more’ now than ever before in history. We are at the beginning of incredible social changes such as  ‘dematerialization’ and ‘demonetization’.

I read the book ‘Abundance’ by Diamandis and Kotler years ago, and the advice has stuck with me. The authors argue that the poorest people in the USA have more services than were available to the richest person 100 years ago, and that we all have instant access to more information than the US president did only a decade ago – we live in a time of abundance. What this means is there is a massive shift in what the ‘trappings of success’ look like. The most precious resource of all is time – and no matter how rich you are, you are given the same 24 hours as everybody else.

All this ‘abundance’, however, is not necessarily delivering a better version of human beings. As part of my research for the ‘Get Healthy At Work’ campaign I was reviewing research* about why getting healthy at work is such a good idea… I had heard that "sitting is the new smoking," with equal if not worse potential health consequences. Here are a few alarming statistics – in NSW 52% of people are either overweight or obese, 73% are not eating the right food (i.e. fresh fruit and vegetables) 57% are not moving enough, i.e. they are not getting enough physical activity (oh and we still drink and smoke too much).

Is the life of abundance in fact slowly killing us; or at best reducing our ability to enjoy life?

I’m known for my commitment to great workplaces and my passion for great employee experiences – but I didn’t become the leader I am today simply to be nice! Quite the contrary, I had other reasons all those years ago for putting in place a program at RedBalloon to support people’s well-being. I had done the research and I found that Happy People are far more likely to have Happy Customers... which ultimately will deliver Happy profits. There is a commercial outcome for having a great place to work.

More recently this has been confirmed in a study – an employer will save an average of $100k per SME over five years in lost productivity. These figures are alarming – they are the hidden costs of being uncompetitive. If we are ever going to compete on a global scale we need to be physically able to beat the competition.

Let me challenge you for a moment – take a look around your workplace... that person who eats badly, is ducking out for a ‘dart’ at lunch time and who is always sitting around not moving, is two and a half times more likely to be taking sick days. There is another $50k off the bottom line over 5 years.

The research tells us that if people are not physically ‘fit’, then the stresses of any normal job will seem far more overwhelming for them, and 64% of those are unable to cope with the stress associated with their job, resulting — you guessed it – in even more absenteeism.

Every business is different of course, but there is a nifty website where you can find out the economic cost on your business: BizHealthSaver. If you ever needed to be convinced, then have a look at this site and the dollars that this is costing businesses speak for themselves.

It does not have to be like this. We live in the most abundant time in history and we have more information available to us that we have ever had. You can do something about this epidemic… right now.

#AdviceThatSticks Healthy Happy Employees deliver Happy customers.

About 9 years ago I saw my absenteeism and turnover of people skyrocket to 64%... I knew there was no one other than myself, as the leader of the business, who could take responsibility for that. It was not ‘them’, it was ‘me.’ I had to transform who I was as a leader of people. I had to realise that people were not there to work for me – I was there to support them. If I supported their well being then they could be there to support the well-being of my customers...

.....In the continuation of this article, I talk about what my solution was to the skyrocketing absenteeism and turnover of people, and the five elements that can impact well-being. Head over to my NS.com blog for more!

Naomi Simson is the founding director of Australian online tech success story RedBalloon and Redii. She has written more than 1000 blog posts at NaomiSimson.com, is a professional speaker, author of Live What You Love & Ready To Soar, and is one of five “Sharks” on TEN’s business reality show Shark Tank.Follow her on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.