A recent survey data of 39,000 UK workers by a business psychology company, Robertson Cooper, showed that as many as a quarter had struggled into work, despite feeling ill.
The survey appears in the firm’s annual report entitled “UK Perspectives on employee engagement and well-being”.
Although a complex issue, the firm argues that one of the key features of “presenteeism” is people who feel compelled to turn up to the office when they are too ill to work and should actually be at home.
The employees surveyed in this report (from both the public and private sectors) rated their health and productivity levels over the past three months using the firm’s employee engagement and well-being assessment tool, ASSET. They were also asked if they had taken time off during this period and all the results were analysed in order to estimate rates of “presenteeism”.
The results were striking. Only 50 per cent of UK workers in the sample reported good health, with the remainder describing their health as just “alright” or “poor”. However, despite not being at peak fitness, 26 per cent reported taking no sick leave at all during their last three months at work.
Not surprisingly perhaps, this group also reported lower productivity than their “healthier” colleagues - with just 38 per cent claiming their productivity was at 90 per cent or above, compared with 51 per cent of workers in the “healthy” group. In particular, they reported poorer work relationships, a worse work-life balance and more work overload than their healthy counterparts.
Robertson Cooper warns that when employees come to work ill simply to show their faces and work unproductively the implications for company performance, and indeed the economy as a whole, are damaging and costly.
For more information, go to:
http://www.robertsoncooper.com/Resources/documents/presenteeism.pdf