Three Overlooked Health Factors That Quietly Undermine Productivity — & What They Cost Your Business (Plus How To Fix Them)

Written By Dr Claire Gillvray, Welbeck Cambridge (2026)

When productivity falls, organisations tend to look first at strategy, skills, incentives, or culture. Health is often considered only when sickness absences rise or insurance costs spike. In clinical practice, however, I routinely see a different reality: productivity is frequently eroded long before employees are “ill enough” to be absent.

The true cost lies in presenteeism, employees who are physically present but cognitively depleted, emotionally dysregulated, or physiologically underperforming. Below are three commonly overlooked health factors that silently drive this problem, along with what they cost organisations in real terms.

 

1.         Chronic Sleep Debt (Not Insomnia — Deprivation)

Most high-performing professionals do not identify as “poor sleepers.” They simply accept short sleep as a trade-off for ambition. From a medical standpoint, however, obtaining 5 hours of sleep or less constitutes chronic sleep deprivation, even in the absence of a diagnosable sleep disorder.

Sleep debt impairs executive function, emotional regulation, working memory, decision accuracy, and reaction time. This is before it impacts physical and mental health. Reduced immune function, increases anxiety and depression, decreased metabolic function[1].

What it costs for your business:

• Increased error rates and rework
• Slower decision-making and reduced innovation
• Higher risk of workplace accidents and near-misses
• Reduced leadership effectiveness and team morale

 

To prevent this, business owners should review workload expectations, discourage long-hours cultures, and model boundaries around rest, recovery, and realistic performance timelines.

 

2.         Hormonal Dysfunction (The Hidden Regulator of Energy, Focus, and Resilience)

Hormonal health is often framed as a niche or gender-specific issue such as menopause, fertility, or thyroid disease. In reality, hormones regulate core drivers of workplace performance for all employees across all life stages.

Chronic stress, sleep disruption, sedentary behaviour, under-fuelling, and irregular eating patterns all disrupt key hormonal systems, including cortisol, insulin, thyroid hormones, and sex hormones. These changes frequently sit below diagnostic thresholds and therefore go unrecognised. Some will talk of adrenal fatigue, but all the hormonal systems form a delicate scaffold that supports our health and wellbeing.

Early hormonal dysregulation commonly presents as:

• Persistent fatigue despite adequate rest
• Brain fog, reduced concentration, and slower processing speed
• Mood volatility, irritability, or low motivation
• Reduced stress tolerance and resilience

 

Employees often worry that they are failing in their roles, experience imposter syndrome and can even think about leaving.

Hormonal dysfunction drives:

• Inconsistent performance and unreliable output
• Increased presenteeism masked as “showing up but underdelivering”
• Higher rates of mid-career attrition, particularly among experienced staff
• Escalating long-term healthcare and insurance costs

 

Employers should provide access to preventative health support, flexible working patterns, and education that normalises early assessment rather than crisis management.

 

3.         Unaddressed Nervous System Strain and Stress

Stress is commonly discussed in psychological or cultural terms including workload, deadlines, and pressure. Medically, what matters is chronic sympathetic nervous system activation. Many employees operate in a persistent state of physiological stress or “on” without meeting criteria for anxiety or burnout.

This state degrades performance long before mental health leave is taken.

Impact on performance:

• Reduced cognitive flexibility and creativity
• Increased interpersonal friction and conflict
• Impaired memory consolidation and learning
• Decision fatigue, disproportionately affecting senior leaders

 

Chronic sympathetic nervous system strain leads to; poorer strategic judgement and slower execution, increased management friction and miscommunication and loss of experienced staff who feel “exhausted but not unwell enough to stop”.

Designing roles and workflows that allow recovery, autonomy, and psychological safety, rather than sustained urgency as a default is something business owners should adopt.

The Strategic Takeaway

From a medical standpoint, productivity loss is rarely sudden. It is typically the downstream effect of unmeasured health erosion that traditional HR metrics fail to capture.

Organisations that treat health as a strategic asset, rather than a reactive benefit, are better positioned to sustain performance, retain talent, and manage long-term risk.

The evidence is clear, employee health is not a soft issue. It is a material determinant of organisational output. The workplace that encourages employees to think about their health will be rewarded with employees who are fit to work at their best. Workplace health benefit schemes and time to attend necessary appointments can help employees to value self-care. Educational events around lifestyle factors that impact on health and role modelling from senior leaders of the benefits of down time and recovery can also help employees to know their health is valued by their organisation.

Workplace wellbeing strategies work if they are tailored to the team and are not just about ticking the box.

About Welbeck Health Partners

https://welbeckhealthpartners.com/welbeck-cambridge/

Welbeck Health Partners was founded by a group of leading healthcare specialists from the UK and USA who strongly believed that better care was possible, and that an entirely new sort of organisation was needed to deliver this.

Through working in partnership with expert teams of doctors, architects, and operations experts, our flagship centre, Welbeck London, was created. Welbeck is now a private healthcare facility like no other, with eighteen specialties all under one roof all uniquely created to put the patient first, as well as our own Surgery Centre. Our flagship building continues to grow, with further specialties planned to open later on this year and beyond, as well as regional centres to expand our offering beyond London.

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