Asia may be sitting on a public health time bomb, as the effects of long working hours, poor nutrition and sedentary lifestyles threaten to create poorer health outcomes for workers than their western counterparts.

Alongside the burdens on employees of stress and lack of social support, employers face the prospect of coping with ageing workforces and the spectre of rapidly rising rates of obesity — with the attendant risks of diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

The AIA Healthiest Workplace survey, the second annual such exercise by research consultancy Rand Europe, funded by wellness programme AIA Vitality and backed by the FT, reveals high levels of mental and physical ill health. It also shows that the proportion of productive days lost per employee to absenteeism and presenteeism (when workers turn up but are ineffective because they are ill, distracted or unwell) is much higher than in the UK (see table below).