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Present but Unproductive
January 10, 2008
The Trouble with Presenteeism in the Workplace
By Yvonne Ventresca
You've been up all night, coughing and sniffling. When the alarm goes off, you topple over a tower of tissues on your nightstand while hitting the "off" button. Your head is pounding and you're miserable. Do you call in sick? No, you dutifully go to work. In the past, management frequently viewed this as a sign of commitment. "What a trooper," the boss would say. But research has shown that it might be better for everyone if you just stayed in bed, instead of providing an example of what experts call "presenteeism."
What is presenteeism? According to www.wordspy.com, a Web site devoted to neologisms, it is "the feeling that one must show up for work even if one is too sick, stressed, or distracted to be productive; the feeling that one needs to work extra hours even if one has no extra work to do."
Managers are familiar with absenteeism, the productivity loss associated with employees who stay home from work. And many incentive programs encourage perfect attendance through rewards. However, the hidden costs of presenteeism are often less analyzed, despite its prevalence. "The majority of us can say that we have gone to work with cold or sinus infections, hoping that aspirin or [other over-the-counter medicines] will get us through the day. In reality, the medicine makes us feel a bit out of it, and our concentration levels suffer," says Karen English, a senior consultant and partner with Boston-based Spring Consulting Group, LLC. "Although it seems minimal at the time, its overall effect when spread throughout the workforce can be major."
In fact, presenteeism may be costing employers even more than absenteeism. According to Dr. Kimberly Jinnett, research director of the Integrated Benefits Institute in San Francisco, 77% of lost time for the average employer generally comes from presenteeism, with only 23% attributed to absence. Findings in a 2004 study by the Cornell Institute for Health and Productivity Studies show that presenteeism may account for as much as 60% of the cost of worker illness. A Harvard Business Review case from the same year cites the U.S. presenteeism cost at over $150 billion per year in lost productivity.
On-the-Job Productivity Loss
Being present but unproductive can stem from a variety of causes. English says presenteeism can be "due to health-related reasons such as the flu, common cold or other illnesses that don't seem quite bad enough to miss work. Other sources could be more emotionally related, such as a recent death in the family, an argument with a spouse or child, or any number of personal problems an individual might be facing." Jinnett names depression, fatigue, sleeping problems, pain, anxiety, and allergies as some of the leading causes. Employees feeling the need for face time may also fill work hours with non-job-related tasks. Fantasy football or Internet surfing, anyone?
Presenteeism is not expected to disappear any time soon, due to trends in employee age and lifestyle. "Many experts speculate that with the demographic shift in the workforce to older workers and greater rates of obesity and other conditions, we may experience rising rates of presenteeism in the future," Jinnett says.
Possible Solutions: Tracking, Flexibility, and Wellness
What can managers do about presenteeism? Says Rob Kramer, senior director of business development for Ceridian Health & Productivity Management Services in Minneapolis, Minn., "You can't change what you can't measure." He recommends that employers track presenteeism and absences. Outside companies, such as Ceridian, can assist employers in identifying the problem and providing solutions. "Ceridian provides a specialized health risk assessment that also includes a validated measure of presenteeism," explains Kramer. "This allows companies to get a sense of how presenteeism is impacting their business [and to see] the most significant contributors to presenteeism." Services such as health coaching, employee assistance programs and nurselines are specifically "directed at keeping employees on the job and being productive," Kramer says.
Cary Cooper, professor of organizational psychology and health at Lancaster University's Management School in the United Kingdom, was one of the first people to popularize the term "presenteeism." One way to avoid it, Cooper suggests, is to create flexible work arrangements. "Using new technology," he says, "people can work partly from home and partly from a central office." How, when, and where the employees get the work done is left up to them. This approach can reduce presenteeism and boost productivity, by replacing commuting downtime with viable work hours, for example. "Maybe they do take a half an hour or 40 minutes to go pick a kid up from school," he says. "But that's better and healthier for them than sitting around, talking about the latest football scores."
Jinnett stresses the wellness component of preventing presenteeism. "Supporting a well workforce requires equal attention to prevention, treatment and return-to-work, whether someone is currently healthy, has a chronic illness or is recovering from a serious illness or injury," she says. Jinnett recommends a combination of health promotion, disease management, and disability management programs. "Incentives should reward employees for healthy results," she says. "For example, reward employees for completing a Health Risk Assessment (so employers can understand their employees' medical conditions), for seeking and following through on treatment recommendations, and for healthy outcomes (weight reduction, timely and healthy return to work)."
Presenteeism is a complicated problem with many facets to its solution. Kramer points out that "it is an education process to help managers understand absences that are warranted and to identify absences that are not." The attention needs to be on more than just individual sick days. "If employers continue to focus on flu and colds, they may be missing the real driver of chronic illness," Jinnett says. "All health-related programs are important for reducing the impact of presenteeism on the business." In a climate of downsizing and doing less with more, managing employees that are both present and productive may be one key to success.
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