Dan Goodwill, President, Dan Goodwill & Associates blogs in Truck News about a recent seminar highlighting research on the Health and Wellness of Commercial Truck and Bus Drivers, which summarizes a study from the Transportation Research Board published in 2012.

Some highlights:

One of the overriding goals … was to determine whether potential ROI could be identified for both large and small commercial carriers if they initiated employee H&W programs.

Determining what constitutes an ROI metric for employee H&W programs is probably most readily grasped as simply the ratio of dollars saved or returned to a function of dollars invested or expended in the conduct of such programs. Many speakers at the conference pointed out that numerous factors might be considered in determining both the costs and other quantifiable efforts that go into conducting an H&W program.

Various speakers cited numerous indicators of cost savings that could be accounted for in the equation, including savings in at least the following:

Direct costs (e.g., fewer hospital claims, physician visits, and pharmacy costs),
Indirect costs (e.g., less absenteeism, fewer disability issues), and
Future costs (e.g., cuts in health services to treat complications, less disease progression, or keeping healthy people healthy).
But the dollar values included in ROI figures constitute only a portion of the story. Many more “indicators of the worth” of an employee H&W program transcend dollars and cents, such as employee pride, satisfaction, and retention.

The Healthy Trucker Pilot Study

In a later session at the DFP workshop, Glenn spoke about a six month pilot study being conducted by 30 Canadian trucking companies with 51 drivers participated. Some of Canada’s leading trucking firms such as Challenger, SLH, Bison, Highland and Canada Cartage participated in “The Healthy Trucker” pilot. Here are some of the highlights.

Click here for the full report