Missed work due to poor health adds up to a whopping total of nearly 1.4 billion days annually, and amounts to 60 cents for every dollar employers spend on health care benefits. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Employees who suffer from poor health can be expensive. While employers already spend nearly $880 billion on the health care benefits they provide to employees and dependents, that's not the only thing that costs them.

So says a new report from the Integrated Benefits Institute, which finds that illness-related productivity losses are pretty pricey too. Not only do employees covered by sick time, workers' compensation, disability and family and medical leave benefits miss about 893 million days a year due to illness, they also rack up an estimated 527 million lost work days due to impaired performance.

That adds up to a whopping total of nearly 1.4 billion days annually, and amounts to 60 cents for every dollar employers spend on health care benefits.