A Medibank Private study has found that people who are ‘stressed’ at work are costing the economy $15billion a year in lost productivity. Stress is defined as people who have demands placed on them that they either don’t have the capacity to do (work overload) or the skill to do the job.

Australian’s who are stressed will take on average 3.2 days off a year, costing businesses billions. The point is though it is often not seen. Perhaps it is their disengaged colleagues who are creating the stress. Disengaged: means that the employee is actively working against what their colleagues achieve. According to Gallup Organization with 18% of the workplace costing businesses $32.7 billion in lost productivity.

It doesn’t matter which way you look at it – unhappy employees are bad for the bottom line.

A third of people leave their employment because they think they are not noticed. It doesn’t take much to notice people’s contribution – and if they have too much to do or not the skills it makes financial sense to do something about it sooner rather than later.