How Much Is Problem Drinking Costing Your Business?
Employers may recognize that problem drinking can harm their business. But until now they've had difficulty quantifying its cost. Ensuring Solutions to Alcohol Problems offers a simple calculator for this purpose using data from federal government sources.
The Alcohol Cost Calculator uses prevalence rates of problem drinking in eleven industry sectors to broadly measure its impact on specific workplaces. However, problem drinking has many other costs not included in the calculator. Among them:
- increased use of worker's compensation and disability benefits
- accidents and damage
- increased worker turnover and replacement costs
- diverted supervisory, managerial and coworker time
- friction among workers
- damage to a company's reputation
- increased liability
- theft and fraud
The profound effect of problem drinking on family life also shows up in the workplace. If an employee lives with someone who has a drinking problem, his or her job performance and attendance may suffer. Problem drinking can lead to higher employer health care costs for covering the entire family, not just the person with the drinking problem.
