The Wall Street Journal
© Copyright 1998 Dow Jones and Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Tuesday, December 22, 1998

Productivity Data Indict Casual Drinking

By RON WINSLOW
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Health researchers say they have uncovered a hidden source of productivity problems for American corporations: casual drinkers.

A survey of 14,000 employees at seven major U.S. companies found that workers who aren’t considered problem drinkers cause, in aggregate, far more incidents of absenteeism, tardiness and poor quality of work than those regarded as alcohol-dependent. The findings suggest that seemingly innocuous events such as an afterwork trip to the bar or a family birthday party can add up to a significant drag on productivity.

“This research is a wake-up call,” says Bruce Davidson, manager of employee assistance and work-life programs at Compaq Computer Corp.’s Digital Equipment Corp. unit, which wasn’t a participant in the study. He notes that while employers have made significant investments to deal with workers with chronic alcohol problems, they have paid scant attention to the potential impact of alcohol use among a much broader segment of the work force.

The $2 million report, known as the Worksite Alcohol Study, was sponsored by the National Institute for Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health; and by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a Princeton, N.J., health-care philanthropy. The seven participating companies-all of whom insisted on anonymity-included an insurer, an oil company, a utility, a paper manufacturer, a building-materials concern and two conglomerates.

Drinking on the Job Percentages of people who drink at work*: Managers: Supervisors: Hourly Workers: *Drinking within 2 hours of coming to work–during a break, while working, or while attending a company event. Source: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

The NIAAA estimates that alcohol problems cost U.S. employers $27 billion a year in productivity alone, a bill attributed largely to alcohol-dependent workers. But hardly anyone has considered the possibility that an occasional hangover after a party or a little too much wine at lunch among a much broader segment of the work force might add up to a significant adverse effect on corporate performance.

Thomas W. Mangione, director of the study, likened the results to similar findings during the past decade that casual drinkers, not alcoholics, cause the lion’s share of drunk-driving-related accidents and fatalities. Dr. Mangione is a senior research scientist at JSI Research & Training Institute Inc., a nonprofit organization in Boston that specializes in health issues.

“It’s subtle,” he says. “It is individual people who don’t do this very often, but because there are so many … in aggregate it totals up to a very big problem.”

Dr. Mangione and his colleagues didn’t set out to look at productivity issues among casual drinkers. Instead, they conduct a broad assessment of alcohol use and the workplace through surveys, interviews and focus groups conducted at several sites at each of the participating companies.

They found that people considered occasional drinkers, in total, cause nearly 29% more incidents such as absenteeism, tardiness, less than acceptable work or arguments with colleagues than workers who said they didn’t drink at all.

Workers with alcohol problems cause 28% more such incidents than casual drinkers but, in total, just 41% of total alcohol-related productivity problems, compared with 59% for the occasional drinkers.

In addition, in what the researchers say is contrary to conventional wisdom, researchers found that nearly one-quarter of managers and executives drink some alcohol during the workday, compared with 8% of hourly workers.

The finding of moderate workday alcohol consumption among managers comes even as once-common three-martini lunches have largely disappeared and as many companies have cut back on openbar holiday parties. But top management’s tolerance of alcohol use may be a barrier to addressing its occasional misuse in the broader population, experts say.

David C. Deubner, vice president, occupational medicine, at Brush Wellman Inc., a Cleveland manufacturer of beryllium products, says the findings help him understand why he finds people at higher levels of management less concerned about the problem than plant managers and workers.

Dr. Deubner, who was instrumental in developing strong workplace alcohol policies at Conrail Inc., the Philadelphia rail company, says he plans to use the data to spur top management at his company to pay more attention to the issue. But he also concedes that it isn’t clear what effective remedies are available.

“We have worked out procedures that are quite effective in working with the addict, ” he says. “If we decide that 50% to 60% of our productivity impact is due to an additional 60% of the work force that we haven’t dealt with, do we have technologies to deal with that?”

The alcohol study’s findings come at a time when global competitiveness, a tight labor market, and robust stock market valuations are putting ever-increasing pressure on companies to squeeze every ounce of productivity out of their employees. At the same time, a resurgence of health-care costs is focusing renewed attention on the impact that personal behavior can have on both medical expenses and job performance.

But Dr. Mangione counsels that companies shouldn’t take the study’s data as a mandate to delve into the private lives of Generally productive employees. Rather, he and his colleagues call for employee awareness campaigns and other similar public-health efforts. They also recommend that employers examine their overall attitudes toward alcohol and how this part of the corporate culture may influence the behavior of their workers.

John Saylor, manager of employee assistance programs for AIMR Corp., Fort Worth, Texas, which wasn’t a participant in the study, says one important finding offers guidance to employers seeking to address the issue. The productivity problems were most apparent at some individual sites at each of the participating companies, he said, indicating a local culture within a company that encourages misuse of alcohol. “That says there is something you can target,” Mr. Saylor says.

Susan Martin, program director for work-site alcohol problems at NLAAA, says: “Work cultures vary widely, and there are informal norms of do’s and don’ts of drinking that contribute to wide variation.” She adds: “Companies often don’t enforce their own policies, and that contributes to the problem.”

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