I am finding this interesting term “Presenteeism” working while sick, or super stressed, and not being fully productive.
Presenteeism defined:
effects on
Mental, physical, and emotional health.
Signs- colds, stress, working long hours example.
Cost to business: same as absenteeism
Effects on company: lack of productivity, HR difficulties, workplace stress
Common in hospitals, Human services, Schools.
Answer
Wellness Programs Build and Help Sustain High Employee Morale
I’m going to let you in on a little secret. The WellSteps wellness solution has a performance guarantee. After three years we guarantee that your wellness program will have a positive return on investment. The secret is that after three years almost nobody cares about the ROI.
That may have been a good reason to start their wellness program, but after employees start to engage, communicate with each other, feel valued and appreciated, the reasons for doing a wellness program change. After three years we have found that our clients like to do wellness because they like the way it has changed their worksite culture.
Employees are obviously healthier but more importantly they are happier. This is another reason that doesn’t have scientific research to back it up. We are probably never going to have a good study that can evaluate that question. What we do have, however, is experience with hundreds of clients that have migrated away from the ROI of wellness and have moved towards
Absenteeism
Absenteeism can most easily be understood as when employees are not working at all and have taken a day of absence from the workplace. An employee will have either called out sick; have had a family emergency, or a prior engagement that must be met. Absenteeism has always been a delicate subject for employees and employers because of its implications behind the scenes. Employees may get the day off, but often stress about the reaction of their boss or the credibility of their commitment to work, or sometimes even a result in a cut of pay. On the other hand, employers’ concerns include falling behind on important work, and losing money if the employee is getting paid sick leave. Either way you look at absenteeism it is seen as bad news, but is it really…?
Presenteeism
A good way to describe presenteeism is being present at the workplace but not being productive due to an illness, lack of motivation, or work overload. Presenteeism can cause a large variety of work related issues. An example of this would be having an employee come into work with a bad cold or the flu. Having this employee come in can put your other employees health at risk and the reality is if they have fallen ill their quality of work is going to suffer as well. A big contribution to presenteeism and the highest; as you can see on the chart below is due to chronic diseases or disorders. When someone has type 2 diabetes, it may be very difficult to focus on work when they are worried about their blood glucose level. The major issue with employees that suffer from presenteeism for companies is it costs the same amount in wages and benefits for them, as it does for those working at full capacity. So the cost is the same while the output of work is reduced.
