In the last few years, “presenteeism” has become an even larger concern for many corporations than absenteeism. Despite the fact that many HR/benefits managers hate the admittedly overused term, presenteeism is nevertheless a real issue in almost every workplace.
Most commonly, presenteeism takes the form of workforce coming to work sick. They’re unproductive and endanger colleagues. Meanwhile, the worker is not forced to use a sick day. A bad deal for corporations all the way around.
A recent survey by LifeCare revealed that 93 percent of personnel (polled from 1,500 corporations) admit that they at least ocassionally come to work when they’re sick enough to stay home. More important, the published study looked at the reasons why folks do it.
Troubling rationales
The No. 1 reason workforce cited for coming to work sick was a belief that they’d be “letting other individuals down” if they call out. Almost 30% of respondents cited this as their primary reason. Beyond that, the top responses were -
o It’s too risky, because of office politics or culture, to take time off (26%)
o The staff member is too busy at work to be able to stay home a day (15%)
o The employee saves up sick days for childcare/eldercare emergencies (12%), and
o The employee saves up sick days to use as extra vacation time (8%).
A lot of of these rationales are troubling to HR/benefits managers.
In the first place, supervisors who hassle employees about taking legitimate sick leave are, at best, being pennywise and poundfoolish. Presenteeism costs more than absenteeism, once you figure in the uncharged sick days, lack of productivity and risk of other employees getting sick.
You’ve more power than you think to change your company culture when the “tough it out” mentality still applies to individuals who come in sick. When upper-level management is confronted with the real dollars and cents of presenteeism, lowering the problem ordinarily becomes a priority. At the very least, firms shouldn’t invite it.
In terms of supervisor- and employee-education, repetition of the “stay home if you’re sick” message is the key. Eventually, it’ll sink in.
Of course, there’s still the problem â.” as evidenced by the survey â.” of staff who misuse their sick days by attempting to hoard them for other purposes.
Adopting PTO, no-fault absence policies or use-it-lose-it sick time are the three most common ways of reducing the risk, but be aware that each of these policies have risks of their own.
At the end of the day, the more open the lines of communication are between upper-level management and staff, the less prevalent the presenteeism problem becomes.
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