Cost of inaction calculator

What could poor mental health be costing your workplace?

An estimate for New Zealand and Australian employers, designed to be conservative and based mainly on published New Zealand and Australian research. Every number is shown and you can change any of them. No email needed to see your result.

Your workplace

Country
Add staff turnover (optional)

There is no reliable NZ or Australian figure for how many resignations are caused by poor mental health, so this stays at zero unless you add your own numbers.

Example from research: a NZ study put the turnover cost of one full-time registered nurse at NZ$23,711 (North et al. 2013, older dollars) [9].

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Your estimate

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The bigger picture

New Zealand NZ$21 billion a year

The annual cost of serious mental illness, including addiction, to New Zealand is estimated at around 5% of GDP, which equates to about NZ$21 billion in 2024. This is a cost to the whole country, not only to employers, and not an estimate for your organisation. [10]

Australia A$16.6 billion a year

Estimated cost of mental illness to the Australian economy through lost workplace productivity in 2018–19: absenteeism (A$9.6 billion) plus reduced productivity at work (A$7.0 billion). This is a national figure, not an estimate for your organisation. [4]

WellbeingSolutions can support you to identify and manage psychosocial risks, part of your duty under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015.

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What early action could be worth

Research for SafeWork NSW (Yu & Glozier, 2017) estimated that certain evidence-based workplace programs, such as stress-management training and return-to-work support, return between A$1.50 and A$4 for every A$1 spent. This research is about workplace programs in general and is not specific to WellbeingSolutions.

This is a modelled estimate from one Australian study, not a promise of savings for your organisation.

Show the maths

(every assumption, editable)

Change any figure below and the estimate updates. Changing country or sector puts the sector figures back to their sourced defaults.

Formulas, with your numbers

Select "Show my estimate" to see the working.
Why there's no workers' compensation line for New Zealand: NZ has no employer workers' compensation system for this. ACC is a no-fault scheme funded by levies, and it covers work-related mental injury only when it's caused by a single, sudden traumatic event at work, not by ongoing stress [7]. So we leave it out rather than guess.

What this estimate leaves out

  • Staff turnover, unless you add your own figures (no reliable NZ or Australian figure links resignations to mental health).
  • Management time, overtime, cover staff, and the effect on teammates and customers.
  • Presenteeism among people whose mental health is good. We only count the extra compared with them, which keeps the estimate conservative.

Limits to keep in mind

  • Rates of poor mental health and lost productivity come from a large Australian study using Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey data. New Zealand estimates use these as a proxy, labelled on the page. New Zealand's own survey finds a similar overall level of high psychological distress (14.3% of adults in 2024/25) [2], but doesn't split it by industry.
  • Sector rates average the published male and female rates, which assumes an even gender mix. Some sector figures come from small samples.
  • Default salaries are full-time industry averages. If many of your staff are part-time, enter your actual average pay per person.
  • This is a planning estimate based on population averages. It isn't a prediction for your organisation, an assessment of any person, or financial, legal or medical advice.

Sources

  1. Yu S, Glozier N (2017). Mentally healthy workplaces in NSW: A return-on-investment study. University of Technology Sydney and University of Sydney, for SafeWork NSW. Prevalence by industry (Table 3), extra sick days, extra presenteeism by industry (Table 6), productivity-loss values, $1.50–$4 return per $1.
  2. Ministry of Health (2025). Annual Update of Key Results 2024/25: New Zealand Health Survey. 14.3% of adults had high or very high psychological distress in the past four weeks.
  3. Safe Work Australia (2026). Key Work Health and Safety Statistics Australia 2026 (October 2026 edition; PDF). Mental health conditions were 12.2% of serious claims in 2024–25 (preliminary); serious-claim rate 10.7 per 1,000 jobs; median compensation A$68,600 per mental health claim (2023–24).
  4. Productivity Commission (2020). Mental Health, Inquiry Report (Volume 1, Table 1). Estimated cost of mental ill-health in 2018–19: absenteeism A$9.6 billion and presenteeism A$7.0 billion a year.
  5. Australian Bureau of Statistics (2026). Average Weekly Earnings, Australia, May 2026. Full-time adult ordinary time earnings by industry, × 52.
  6. Stats NZ, Quarterly Employment Survey, June 2026 quarter: average ordinary time hourly earnings by industry, × 2,080 hours. Via Figure.NZ and Stats NZ.
  7. ACC. Work-related mental injury cover decisions.
  8. WorkSafe New Zealand. Managing psychosocial risks at work.
  9. North N, Leung W, Ashton T, et al. (2013). Nurse turnover in New Zealand: costs and relationships with staffing practises and patient outcomes. Journal of Nursing Management 21(3):419–28.
  10. Te Hiringa Mahara – Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission (2025). Briefing to the Incoming Minister of Health, February 2025. The annual cost of the burden of serious mental illness, including addiction, is around 5% of GDP, about NZ$21 billion in 2024.

Figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Safe Work Australia (© Commonwealth of Australia), Te Hiringa Mahara – Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission, the Ministry of Health and Figure.NZ are used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0). Source: based on Productivity Commission data, Mental Health, Inquiry Report, used under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia licence (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/au). This work is based on/includes Stats NZ's data which are licensed by Stats NZ for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence. We have combined and recalculated these figures; see 'Show the maths'. No organisation listed here endorses WellbeingSolutions.