Boundaries may be the last thing you think of when you assess the financial health of your business. However, how your employees interact with one another, management, and even with themselves, can impact not only your bottom line, but the future of your business. 

Consider a potential boundary situation in the workplace: Susan is a wonderful employee. She has her eye on a promotion and she’s constantly offering up more and more of her time to take on new projects and prove her abilities. Her coworker, Jackie, takes no pride in her role. Seeing Susan constantly volunteering for more work gets her thinking. If someone else is willing to take on her responsibilities, she’s happy to spend her time gossiping by the water cooler, taking smoke breaks, and texting her friends outside the office. Every day, more and more responsibilities get piled onto Susan’s plate. Susan doesn’t want to bring this to management lest she no longer be seen as a “team player.” So instead, she’s skipping lunches, forgoing vacations, and working late more nights than not.

The work is getting done, so you may not even know there’s an issue… until it becomes impossible to ignore. 

Susan is becoming short with her coworkers. She looks exhausted and her performance is slipping. Her projects aren’t getting done on time, and they aren’t her usual level of quality. Maybe you intervene in an attempt to figure out what’s happening. Maybe you don’t notice it until it’s too late. Perhaps you promote someone else and now Susan is not only short with her coworkers, but with management as well. She’s openly angry, appears resentful of her workload and her team, has difficulty concentrating on the tasks at hand, and you’ve even heard whispers that she’s looking for a new job. Susan is burned out and looking for an escape route. 

Can you relate? 

The big question is…

How much are bad boundaries costing your business?

When your organization is a hotspot for unhealthy boundaries, you’ll see decreased productivity, low employee morale, dysfunctional teams, high turnover, and depending on the types of boundary violations, you may even find yourself in danger of a lawsuit. 

Sounds scary… but also pretty vague. Without a dollar amount attached to boundary issues, it’s difficult to understand the true danger lurking within your organization. So, let’s attach a dollar amount. Keep in mind that every business is different and depending on the size of your organization, the industry, your employees, and the specific issues you are facing, these numbers may vary. 

Productivity Losses

Unhappy employees are less innovative, perform at subpar levels, create substandard products, and interact poorly with their coworkers and customers. Add burnout to the mix and an employee’s productivity can be reduced by 20-40%. 

According to the World Health Organization, 12 billion working days are lost every year (globally) to depression and anxiety. This costs companies worldwide, $1 trillion per year in lost productivity. 

What about the damage to the immune system when facing a great deal of stress? Now, you’ve got employees taking excessive sick days, or even worse, coming to work sick and infecting others. The average cost of absenteeism per employee ranges between $2,650 annually (salaried employees) and $3,600 annually for hourly workers. Presenteeism (coming to work when they need to stay home) costs approximately $1,500 annually per employee. 

Healthcare Costs 

You pay for (or towards) your employees healthcare. But how does stress in the workplace contribute to healthcare costs? The National Safety Council found that employees experiencing mental distress use, on average, nearly $3,000 more in health care services per year than their peers and organizations spend over $15,000 on average annually on each employee experiencing mental health issues. 

Increased Turnover

When employees aren’t happy, teams are dysfunctional. When teams are dysfunctional, employees are even less happy. It’s an ugly cycle that eventually leads to people searching for greener pastures. How much does it cost to advertise, interview, hire, onboard, and train a new employee? And, how long will it take them to reach the level of full productivity in their role?  

Depending on their position in the company, it is estimated that the cost of replacing an employee ranges from 50% to 200% of their annual salary. 

With numbers like that, can you afford not to focus on healthy boundaries within your organization? Your employees are your most valuable assets. Protect them.