The Double Bottom Line Impact

Emotional, Social and Moral Impact

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“The workplace is the last crucible of sustained human contact for many of the 30,000 people who kill themselves each year in the U.S.A co-worker’s suicide has a deep, disturbing impact on work mates. For managers, such tragedies pose challenges no one covered in management school.”
-Sue Shellenbarger (Wall Street Journal)

Currently, when an employee dies by suicide, there are few guidelines on how the workplace should respond, and due to the current stigma surrounding this form of death, often things are done and said that complicate the grieving process for the survivors. Without training on warning signs and risk factors, employees are often riddled with survivor guilt, knowing that they were often witness to changes in behavior that might have been red flags. Coworkers might second-guess each other’s methods of handling the situation, thus, undermining a critical time for solidarity and support. When people take their lives on worksite property, yet another level of trauma is experienced by co-workers that may be difficult to work through.

While family members who are survivors of another’s suicide are often able to find some support groups for their grief, all too often co-workers are not. Their experiences of grief and trauma are not supported. Similarly, when an employee has survived an attempt or has taken bereavement leave after a family member’s suicide, the workplace is often either unsure of how to handle the reintegration into the workforce, allows, no consideration for their reintegration process. Each of these scenarios have an impact on the morale of the workplace.

Since the mid-90s, suicide prevention has made its way into many school systems. Schools are an appropriate venue for making an impact on this public health issue, but the work cannot end there. Increasingly, socially responsible corporations realize that their role is about the betterment of society. Growing numbers are taking on initiatives to better the environment or help impoverished communities; now many are looking at how they can “do the right thing” by helping their own. Companies realize that a healthy workforce is a loyal and productive workforce; suicide prevention and mental health promotion are part of that picture. While workplaces should never replace therapy services and become some sort of group support center, many are embracing the concept of becoming a mentally healthy workplace.

Financial Impact

Death by suicide often occurs during the height of an employee’s productivity. According to the Institute of Medicine, the economic cost of suicide involves four areas:

  1. “Medical expenses of emergency intervention and non-emergency treatment for suicidality. These medical costs are not borne by the health care industry alone, but by all of society through higher health care costs that are ultimately passed on to workers and taxpayers.
  2. The lost and/or reduced productivity of people suffering from suicidality.
  3. The lost productivity of the loved ones’ grieving a suicide.
  4. Lost wages of those completing suicide, with the greatest absolute numbers of suicides occurring before retirement. Even if the analysis is restricted to the estimate of lost wages of suicide victims, the financial impact of suicide is enormous. By doing this analysis, the Committee found that for suicide in 1998 alone, the value of lost productivity was calculated to be $11.8 billion (in 1998 dollars).”1

Self-Inflicted Injury Hospitalization Costs per Person2

  • Average medical cost per case: $8,232
  • Average work-loss cost per case: $4,000

Cost of Suicide Completion per Person

  • Average medical cost per case: $3,646
  • Average work-loss cost per case: $1,160,655

Top Ten Reasons Why You Should Offer Suicide Prevention in the Workplace

  1. Suicide is a public health issue and workplaces are an important component of a comprehensive strategy.
  2. Workplaces provide a sense of belonging, or community that helps protect against suicide risk factors.3
  3. Workplaces provide a sense of purposefulness, another psychological quality that may decrease a desire for suicide.4
  4. Co-workers often have more face time than family and may be able to pick up on changes in behavior.
  5. Built in methods for dissemination of training and information already exist.
  6. Built in referral mechanisms for mental health services usually exist.
  7. Organizations that demonstrate care for their workplace community by developing wellness programs improve employee morale and retention while keeping costs down.5
  8. Workplaces are already tuned into the needs of preventing “workplace violence.” Many workplace violence perpetrators have also been suicidal, and it is suspected that in many cases most wouldn’t be as likely to kill others if they didn’t feel as though they had nothing to lose.6
  9. Workplaces are finding a holistic environment improves productivity.7
  10. Workplaces institute a suicide prevention plan after it’s too late.

1Institute of Medicine (2002) Reducing Suicide: A National Imperative
2The University of North Carolina Injury Prevention Research Center http://www.prevent.unc.edu/education/distance_learning/mod2/part1/suicide_outline.pdf
3Joiner, T. (2005) Why People Die by Suicide. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
4Ibid
5National Federation of Independent Business, http://www.nfib.com/object/IO_23663.html
6Nicoletti-Flater Associates & Mountain States Employers Council (1997). Violence Goes to Work: An Employer’s Guide. Colorado: MSEC.
7According to Hewitt Associates Best Employers in Australia and New Zealand, the average revenue growth for Best Employers between 2000 and 2003 was 114% higher than that of other organisations, and their average profit growth was 45% higher. These employers spent on average $4,289 on training per employee compared with $3,743 spent by other organizations.