Threat of Redundancy Means Workers are too Scared to take Sick Days
Business productivity suffers when employees have to take days off through illness. There will always be occasions when people are too unwell to attend work but there has been a perception that some employees have exploited the situation by taking sickies' where there is actually nothing wrong with them.
To counter this, many businesses have put in place measures to track absenteeism and have expended a lot of effort on driving down the number of days lost. By introducing things such as back to work interviews' with the employee's line manager, companies have succeeded in reducing the number of fake sick days taken. However, have things gone too far the other way now, with employees feeling obliged to attend work even when they are genuinely unwell? That, certainly, seems to be the finding from a recent study conducted in Scotland.
The study was conducted by health plan provider HAS and suggested that concerns over the weak economy were contributing towards staff feeling compelled to soldier on even when suffering from ailments as serious as the flu. The view was that concerns over the possibility of job redundancies was making staff fearful of being seen to have a poor attendance record.
This new phenomenon has been labeled presenteeism. Backing up its emergence, the study found that more than a third of workers claim they are less likely to take a sick day than a year ago and the same amount say that they aren't even making the time to go to see a doctor about their ailments. Additionally, 45% of men and 31% of women haven't taken a single sick day in the last year.
It's probably too simplistic to say that this is a widespread trend, or that it will be long-lasting. However, there are certainly greater concerns over job security, especially in some of the hardest hit market sectors, so it does sound feasible that workers would be more keen than ever to seek the favour of their bosses. Whether it's actually good for the companies themselves, however, is debatable. Staff who are genuinely unwell are unlikely to be productive and refusing to take time off may just cause their ailments to drag on for longer. Additionally, there's the increased risk of other colleagues catching whatever bug it is and suddenly a whole work team may be affected.
Presenteeism may be a new word but I'd guess that it's probably not a new phenomenon. It feels like basic human psychology to want to work longer hours and miss less days if there's a concern over redundancies or a big organizational restructure. It is, however, something that companies do have a moral obligation to look out for. No-one wants to see people becoming seriously ill and, in some jobs, having someone unwell continuing to work may actually be dangerous. To give a couple of examples, we wouldn't want someone from air traffic control who was too unwell to concentrate properly or someone operating heavy machinery.
Sources:
The Metro newspaper, 6th October 2008. Article by Kirsteen Paterson, quoting study by HSA.
