Presenteeism
Patricia Potter
BUS902/Career Seminar
More and more employers are facing employees that are on the job but, because of illness or other non-health-related issues, are not very productive. This issue is called presenteeism. Presenteeism is productivity and performance related issue that is receiving increased attention and concerns from employers.
Presenteeism is not always as apparent as absenteeism, because it is harder to tell how much an illness affects a person 's performance than to know how often someone does not show up for work. Employees coming to work with an illness can affect both the quantity (people may work more slowly than usual) and quality of work (they might make more mistakes) of their work.1 Presenteeism can also increase financial burden and have the negative impacts including work-related accidents, equipment breakage, absences related to family-work life balance, errors in judgment, conflicts and interpersonal problems. Studies also show that presenteeism may cost a company more substantially than they spend directly on medical treatment and medications. As of now, there is little data and sensitive measures of presenteeism in Canada. However, according to Statistics Canada, the average days absenting per employee per year is 7.5 days or 3% of salary. Studies of some chronic conditions and health risk factors found that lost productivity from presenteeism was 7.5 times greater than productivity loss from absenteeism. For some stress related health problems such as heart disease, hypertension, migraines, and neck or back pain, the ratio increased 15 times greater.2 For example, if a company has 150 employees and salary costs totaled $6,240,000.3 Absenteeism would cost the employer about $187,200 while presenteeism would cost about $1,638,000.
The burning question is how to prevent and deal with presenteeism in workplace. Given the variety of causes and the different effects of presenteeism, a universal action plan which applies to all
BUS902/Career Seminar
More and more employers are facing employees that are on the job but, because of illness or other non-health-related issues, are not very productive. This issue is called presenteeism. Presenteeism is productivity and performance related issue that is receiving increased attention and concerns from employers.
Presenteeism is not always as apparent as absenteeism, because it is harder to tell how much an illness affects a person 's performance than to know how often someone does not show up for work. Employees coming to work with an illness can affect both the quantity (people may work more slowly than usual) and quality of work (they might make more mistakes) of their work.1 Presenteeism can also increase financial burden and have the negative impacts including work-related accidents, equipment breakage, absences related to family-work life balance, errors in judgment, conflicts and interpersonal problems. Studies also show that presenteeism may cost a company more substantially than they spend directly on medical treatment and medications. As of now, there is little data and sensitive measures of presenteeism in Canada. However, according to Statistics Canada, the average days absenting per employee per year is 7.5 days or 3% of salary. Studies of some chronic conditions and health risk factors found that lost productivity from presenteeism was 7.5 times greater than productivity loss from absenteeism. For some stress related health problems such as heart disease, hypertension, migraines, and neck or back pain, the ratio increased 15 times greater.2 For example, if a company has 150 employees and salary costs totaled $6,240,000.3 Absenteeism would cost the employer about $187,200 while presenteeism would cost about $1,638,000.
The burning question is how to prevent and deal with presenteeism in workplace. Given the variety of causes and the different effects of presenteeism, a universal action plan which applies to all
Cited: presenteeism. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged. Retrieved September 20, 2014, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/presenteeism presenteeism. Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/presenteeism (accessed: September 20, 2014). "presenteeism." Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. 20 Sep. 2014. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/presenteeism>. Dictionary.com, "presenteeism," in Dictionary.com Unabridged. Source location: Random House, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/presenteeism. Available: http://dictionary.reference.com. Accessed: September 20, 2014.