Presenteeism can have negative, costly consequences for your company, but what is Presenteeism and what can you do about it?
According to Investors in People, presenteeism is “persistently turning up to work when ill.” At first glance, this might seem like a preferable situation rather than an employee being absent. Justifications such as some work is better than no work at all and an employee who comes to work when sick is clearly loyal, dedicated and has a strong work ethic, are both common reasons given behind presenteeism not really being a problem. However, as reported by many sites such as the HR Magazine, presenteeism can be more costly than absenteeism.
The reason that Presenteeism is often not considered a problem worthy of attention is because it’s effects are not immediate and obvious; it’s a subtle beast, with long term effects that can be incredibly costly. Here’s a list of reasons why Presenteeism is detrimental to your company and how it can effect the workplace.
Increased Absence Periods
The thought process is that if an employee is in work whilst they’re ill, they will slowly get better over time and therefore, no work is missed. Again, this is the justification that some work is better than no work at all. In practice, this is not the case. Firstly, an employee working whilst ill is almost certainly going to be ill for a longer period than if they’d just taken a day or two of absence. You’re measuring two days of absence, against an entire week of slow, sub-par work. An employee working whilst sick is also far more likely to get worse, and end up taking an extended period of absence than if they’d just been absent in the first place. So now you’ve got a situation where the employee came into work and performed poorly for a day or two, and then took the rest of the week off to recover. That’s a lot of time lost when the employee could have just been absent for a few days and returned to work as a far more productive employee.
Lower Productivity
A sick employee is not an efficient or productive employee. They are prone to mistakes, they work much slower and produce lower quality work. Having a sick employee becomes disruptive to other employees, as they have to correct mistakes and pick up the slack for the suffering individual. Alternatively, if the employee had been absent, the extra workload would have been distributed as necessary amongst other employees in a more organised fashion, which is surely preferable against having to backtrack and fit in extra work that was not expected. The better the devil you know…
The Spreading Effect
No man is an island, and your workforce will suffer due to a sick individual at work. Illness can spread, causing others to get sick. As the days go by, this becomes more likely and employees who do become ill may take absences, or may feel compelled to come to work (after all, Sarah was ill and came into work, so I should too…), resulting in more sick people working and more chance of the illness spreading. Even if a sick employee’s work colleagues do not become ill, there are other negative effects. Stress increases, workers become unhappy at having to work alongside ill employees and this lowers the productivity of your workforce. One sick person can have a knock-on effect that sees an entire department feeling unhappy, unhealthy, unproductive, and all this costs time and money.
A time and attendance system can help you to combat presenteeism. If employees feel that absences are fairly recorded and accounted for, then during times of genuine sickness, they will feel more comfortable taking time off work to recover. Implementing a system such as the Bradford Factor ensures that individuals know they will not be penalised for needing time off due to illness. If you have a Time Off In Lieu (TOIL) system in place, employees may want to use some accrued time off to cover an absence, and this is easily referable with a time & attendance system.
Absence management is not just a way for employers to keep track and monitor employees; it also acts as a secure and accurate record for employees to fall back on. If employees are well informed of company policies concerning absence and have all time and attendance data accurately recorded on a reliable T&A system, then this benefits everyone, and goes a long way to keeping absence levels down and avoiding presenteeism.
As a final note; it’s not always possible for an individual to take an absence due to their job role or simply bad timing. Not to mention that an employee may be “on the cusp,” clearly feeling sick but perhaps not quite so bad that they feel comfortable taking an absence. A fair compromise in this instance may be for the employee to work from home. The work may still be slower and of a lower quality, but you can avoid the situation affecting the rest of the workforce; the best of a bad situation. The ability for a remote worker to clock in and out at home would also mean that their attendance record is not affected, which in turn means empoloyees will feel more comfortable taking a period of absence when they really need it.
Presenteeism is a difficult problem to track, so preventing it from occurring in the first place should be a priority. Having the tools at hand to accompany your company policies will make dealing with absenteeism and presenteeism much easier, and a time & attendance system is one of the most effective tools you can have.
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