Presenteeism on rise
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A quarter of people are struggling into work, despite feeling ill, according to a survey from business psychology company Robertson Cooper.
The survey of 39,000 UK workers found that half reported good health, while the rest described their health as ‘alright’ or ‘poor’.
The report found that 26% of these employees took no sick leave at all in the last quarter and only 38% claimed their productivity was at 90% or above, compared with 51% of workers in the ‘healthy’ group.
Professor Ivan Robertson, managing director at Robertson Cooper, says: “Presenteeism in the workplace has a number of causes, one of which is often related to feelings of job insecurity. Recently, this feeling is likely to have been inflamed as a result of the recession.
“People feel under pressure to be at work; they believe that by showing their faces even when they are ill, they are demonstrating their commitment, despite being unproductive. Businesses can’t afford to ignore this problem.”
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David | Thu, 19 Nov 2009 3:20 am
A major cause of presenteeism is the extent of family caregivers in the workplace. Their issues are long term and occur across the spectrum. Therefore, it may be be that the 51% productivity of the healthy workers contain working family caregiver who may be healthy in the clinical sense, but are trying to manage their lives, their work and their family caregiver responsibilities. They surely do not leave their care problems at home at 8:00AM to leave for work or wait till 5:00 PM to pick them back up. Better recognition and support for this ever growing portion of the workplace certainly needs more support than some information and referral EAP program or two conversations with a social worker or psychologist who never had a day of training in non-clinical family caregiving - 85% of almost all family caregiving.
Better support of working family caregivers is a CFO issues as the immense return of productivity from in-place workers is something that goes immediately to the bottom line.
There is no long term care system in the United States and none is coming. If family carving is where 90 of chronic care takes place; then we better support those workers as the present 52 week presenteeism and it cant be cured with a "pill." Family caregiving is not a "disease" or caused by a poor lifestyle. Family Caregiving starts in love, concern or no choice and can become all consuming in every aspect of a persons, family, social and workplace relationships as well as a financial, emotional and physical toll.
It is time we recognize that Presenteeism is not just and issue of "coming to work with the sick" but that it represents a significant percentage of workers now and for the foreseeable future and will not show up on the "clinical" radar until the firebell sounds.
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