Just Not Feeling Up To It Today: The Effects of Presenteeism

Introduction
Another work week is here. The alarm clock goes off. You hit the snooze button, a lot. Finally you get out of bed, but you feel horrible. Your back aches, your head aches, or you have a stuffy nose. Whatever the reason, everyone has had at least one morning before work that they wanted to call in sick but, they go instead. So, you go to work and put as much effort as you can considering how bad you feel. Driving home, you think of the lousy job you did, and know you should have just called in sick. You have just practiced presenteeism. Presenteeism is the act of going to work, but due to an illness, not performing your job at your normal level (Desjardins, 2011). If you are sick and know that you are not going to be able to perform your job, then why go to work? Many people go to work while sick due to: loyalty to co-workers, workaholism, project deadlines, job insecurity, no paid time off, management pressure, and/or high work load (Eric Gosselin, 2013), (Desjardins, 2011). The people that show up sick care about their job, and want to get ahead in the company; they are not the disengaged employees. The multitude of sick employees also care about the success of the company they are working for.

Statistics
The practice of presenteeism has become an even bigger problem than the obvious problem of absenteeism (Dvorsky, 2014), (Elzinga). Some detrimental effects of presenteeism to the company are: customer dissatisfaction, lower quality products, higher administration costs, decreased productivity, higher employee turnover, higher absenteeism rates, and higher costs of employee overtime (Ronald Loeppke, 2009). One survey found that over 50% of companies had problems with presenteeism (Reyes, 2014), and it can account for almost 70% of invisible costs for a company (Ronald Loeppke, 2009). In the United States alone, $150 - $250 billion per year are lost due to the effects of presenteeism on a company (Dvorsky, 2014). Employees working while they are sick have become an issue within the health care community as well. One survey revealed that 80% of physicians go to work with an illness, while at the same time ordering patients to stay home with the same illness (Ofri, 2013). Long term care facilities are at a very high risk of presenteeism. (Eric Wildera, 2010). Most people employed at these facilities are under educated, under paid, and over worked. Also, due to notoriously high staff turnover rates, there is no sense of job security for people still employed. The demanding work schedule causes staff to take care of many patients in a short period of time. The close contact between patient and staff causes infections to spread rapidly through a population, especially if proper hygiene protocol is not followed due to time constraints. An investigation of a norovirus outbreak within a nursing home concluded that from 3 residents and 1 staff member, a total of 35 residents and 24 staff members were infected within a 25 day period (Eric Wildera, 2010). The public health department had to be called in to control the outbreak due to infected employees showing up to work, and spreading the virus even more! When the staff was questioned by the health department about their behavior, they reported that they felt they had to come in due to loyalty towards coworkers, and the heavy work load placed upon them on a daily basis (Eric Wildera, 2010).

Solving Presenteeism
So how can a company resolve this issue? First, the company must acknowledge that they have a problem. A health and work questionnaire given to all employees can help the company know if there is a problem with presenteeism within their company. The most popular one is from the World Health Organization, and is call the Health and Work Performance Questionnaire (HPQ), (Reyes, 2014). The company can then form a plan of action once the results of the HPQ have been analyzed. From the author’s personal experience, a company will have more participation from employees if they explain what their ultimate goal is when handing out the questionnaire. The HPQ has many questions dealing with a person’s daily work habits, which could be interpreted by the employee as the company’s attempt to weed out bad employees. For example: A company that does not communicate to all employees will not have their employees’ cooperation. Many companies are also starting wellness programs to combat the issues associated with presenteeism (Davis, 2014). Wellness programs have been shown to reduce overall health care costs, employee absenteeism, and injuries (Davis, 2014). An active wellness program can boost employee morale, productivity, and loyalty towards the company. One study found that with every dollar spent on a wellness program reduced medical costs by $3.27, and absenteeism costs by $2.73 (Katherine Baicker, 2010). If a wellness program seems too costly, a few adjustments with company policies can be beneficial. Increasing employee paid time off and decreasing workload can help. Also, making the absenteeism policy more lenient, and/or talking to the managers about how they approach employee absenteeism can help (Hemp, 2004).

Conclusion
The important issue to remember is that the employees that come to work consistently and do great work on a regular basis may need to take a sick day. Show them that they can miss a few days of work without losing their job. Great employees need to be considered an asset to the company, and showing flexibility for unexpected illnesses can be the first step to having very loyal employees.