Wellness Programs : Why Do Sick Staff Members Come to Work?
In the last few years, “presenteeism” has become an even larger concern for many businesss than absenteeism. While many HR/benefits managers hate the admittedly overused term, presenteeism is nevertheless a real issue in nearly every workplace.
Most widely, presenteeism takes the form of workers coming to work sick. They’re unproductive and endanger colleagues. Meanwhile, the worker isn’t forced to use a sick day. A bad deal for businesss all the way around.
A recent survey by LifeCare revealed that 93 percent of personnel (polled from 1,500 corporations) admit that they at least ocassionally come to work when they’re sick enough to stay home. More important, the research study looked at the reasons why folks do it.
Troubling rationales
The No. 1 reason employees cited for coming to work sick was a belief that they’d be “letting other people down” if they call out. Almost 30 percent of respondents cited this as their main reason. Beyond that, the top responses were –
• It’s too risky, because of office politics or culture, to take time off (26%)
• The employee is too busy at work to be able to stay home a day (15%)
• The staff member saves up sick days for childcare/eldercare emergencies (12%), and
• The staff member saves up sick days to use as additional vacation time (8%).
Many of these rationales are troubling to HR/benefits managers.
In the first place, supervisors who hassle workforce about taking legitimate sick leave are, at best, being pennywise and poundfoolish. Presenteeism costs more than absenteeism, once you figure in the uncharged sick days, lack of productivity and risk of other workforce getting sick.
You’ve more power than you think to change your company culture if the “tough it out” mentality still applies to individuals who come in sick. When senior management is confronted with the real dollars and cents of presenteeism, decling the problem generally becomes a priority. At the very least, firms shouldn’t invite it.
In terms of supervisor- and employee-education, repetition of the “stay home if you’re sick” message is the key. Eventually, it’ll sink in.
Of course, there’s still the problem – as evidenced by the survey – of employees who misuse their sick days by trying to hoard them for other purposes.
Adopting PTO, no-fault absence policies or use-it-lose-it sick time are the three most common ways of reducing the risk, but be aware that each of these policies have risks of their own.
At the end of the day, the more open the lines of communication are between senior management and personnel, the less prevalent the presenteeism problem becomes.
