People will tend to underperform when they are stressed, in poor health or eating badly, no matter how rich or powerful they are.
That's the central message of Hong Kong-based Feisal Alibhai, the cancer survivor behind bespoke healthcare practice Qineticare.
"Most people [have] never experienced peak focus and energy,” he told FinanceAsia. And what's bad for the individual can also be bad for business.
“In many professions, health has a totally linear relationship to revenues,” Alibhai said in an interview at Qineticare's offices. “You need to be healthy to [put in the hours] and perform to your best ability.”
Qineticare's potential clients include rich individuals, family offices and companies looking to offer the best care to their C-suite executives. But even among such a rarefied group, premium healthcare is not the norm — many even have inappropriate insurance coverage, Alibhai believes.
Some are paying over the odds for things they don’t need while others have policies with inadequate coverage for critical care or premiums that skyrocket after a certain age, Alibhai said.
“The first thing we do for clients is fix their insurance,” he said. “One head of human resources in Hong Kong told me: ‘When we hire people, nobody ever asks for details about [their] health coverage.’ Yes, they want to know that their family and kids are covered but most people tend to just assume that their employer is taking care of them.”
That is rarely the case, not least when it comes to their mental well-being.
Consider the spate of suicides in the financial industry just this year, including a recent death in Hong Kong and at least five other high-profile cases at major financial institutions around the world. Despite the pressures on their staff few employers provide adequate coverage for mental health, even in rich countries. In Asia, the situation is typically worse, says Alibhai.
Delusions of invincibility
While few businesses pay much attention to the health and wellbeing of senior executives, the individuals themselves are often disinterested.
Steve Jobs, for example, helped Apple to become the most profitable company in the world. Yet when he was diagnosed with a type of pancreatic cancer in 2003, his first choice of treatment was described by close friends as “magical thinking”, as well as a diet of roots, pulses and vegetables. It was a mistake that he came to regret.
Such delusions of invincibility are a common trait among top business leaders, despite the fact that middle-aged people who work long, stressful hours in an extremely competitive environment are a particularly vulnerable group.
Indeed, repeated studies over the years have shown that stress and anxiety are the biggest causes of lost productivity in the workplace, and also the hardest to identify.
In the US, the Anxiety and Depression Association of America claims that anxiety disorders cost the economy more than $42 billion a year and that more than half of those costs are associated with the repeated use of healthcare services, as people with anxiety disorders seek relief for symptoms that mimic physical illnesses.
Yet Alibhai, who also owns a distribution business in Africa and recently overcame an aggressive form of cancer, acknowledges that stress is unavoidable — and can even motivate people to perform better. “Stress is good for you,” he said. “The problem is not stress. It’s about learning how to de-stress and focus on mental release.”
It is no secret among professional athletes that health, psychology and performance are closely linked, because the results speak for themselves. Almost all top-level athletes now employ sports psychologists and nutritionists to help them achieve peak performance.
The point was underlined last week by England football team manager Roy Hodgson last week when he announced the appointment of a sports psychologist to help prepare his players for this summer's World Cup in Brazil. Whether that leads to any meaningful improvement in England's fortunes remains to be seen but such a holistic approach could yet have a positive impact beyond sport, if applied to business too.
For Alibhai, who doesn’t accept commissions from insurance brokers and gives 20% of profits to charity, the goal is simpler: “It’s about making a dent in the universe.”
