The Full Cost Estimator Tool

The business costs of illness go beyond your spend for health benefits. Avoidable absences and impaired job performance also impact the bottom-line.

Understanding the full costs of illness is the first step towards knowing the value of a healthy, high-performing workforce. IBI's Full Cost Estimator (FCE) models the absence, disability, presenteeism and opportunity costs of illness based on millions of disability claims in IBI's Disability and Leave Benchmarking data, survey responses to the Health and Productivity Questionnaire (HPQ), and nationally-representative data from the CDC and BLS.

Begin by selecting an industry and providing a headcount. That's all the information the tool needs to generate a model based on industry averages. You can then refine the model based on your company's own benefits policies. View the list of NAICS codes supported by online FCE.

Enter FCE Parameters

*denotes required
NAICS:*
 
Head Count (1 to 150,000,000):*
Values shown below are the defaults for your selected industry.
 
  • How many of these employees work full-time?
  • How many employees are eligible for STD benefits?
  • How many employees are eligible for LTD benefits?
  • How many employees are eligible for leave under the federal FMLA laws?
  • How many employees are eligible for paid sick days benefits?
  • What is the average daily wage/salary for employees (excl. employee benefits)?
  • How much is paid in employee benefits on top of wages and salaries?
  • What is the average wage replacement rate for employees on STD leave?
  • What is the maximum weekly benefit paid to employees on STD leave?
  • What is the average wage replacement rate for employees on LTD leave?
  • What is the maximum monthly benefit paid to employees on LTD leave?
  • What is the average wage replacement rate for employees on WC leave?
  • What is the maximum weekly benefit paid to employees on WC leave?

    • Opportunity costs of lost work time

    Based on a seminal study of absence and lost productivity, we model the opportunity costs of lost work time. Opportunity costs assume that an employer replaces only part of the value of absent or underperforming workers' lost output at the cost of their average compensation—or conversely, that it replaces all of their lost output, but at a cost that is greater than their normal compensation.

    The sliders below allow users to specify how much lost output can be replaced without increasing compensation costs. Replacing 100% of lost output implies that there are no opportunity costs of illness—related absence or underperformance on the job—only wage replacements paid to absent workers. Replacing only 20% of lost output increases opportunity costs to the implied maximum value observed in the source study for the lost productivity method.

  • Lost output replaced for all absences
  • Lost output replaced for presenteeism