Do You Engage In “Sickness Presenteeism” At Work?
Posted June 16, 2009 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
As if you haven’t got enough new terms to learn in this day and age of inflated language – here’s a new one for those who toil every day in an office: “sickness presenteeism.”
That’s the newspeak being used by the Karolinska Institutet of Stockholm to describe employees who insist on coming to work even though they’re not feeling well. And their experts say if you do that, you’re not only running the risk of infecting others, but you’ll wind up with more absences in the future.
Their study looked at just over 3,700 female public sector workers and 2,500 male private sector employees over the course of a three year period. They found 19 percent of the former and 13 percent of the latter came to work despite being under the weather, with five “sickness presenteeism” days on average.
But despite the fact they showed up, those so-called dedicated employees were found to be 40-50 per cent more likely to take up to 30 more sick days the following year because they ignored their health.
“Discouraging workers from staying home when they are sick could lead to increased sickness presenteeism, and thus inadvertently increase sick leave,” warns study chief Gunnar Bergstrom in a statement.
“This underscores the importance of sickness presenteeism in the evaluations of such interventions and considering the effects from a long-term perspective.”
In the end, coming in sick ends up costing both the company and other employees, who run the risk of catching whatever the ill person has or are forced to take up the slack in their increased absence.
The study is especially timely, considering the H1N1 flu pandemic r ecently declared by the World Health Organization. As of Monday, Ontario had 1,907 cases of the disease reported here, most of them mild. It’s not flu season yet in this part of the world and there are fears about what might happen in the fall.
So it’s more important than ever that you avoid so-called “sickness presenteeism” and practice safe “sickness absenteeism” – another new term that just got added to an already complex working world lingo.
From our archives:
The strangest sick day excuses
File photo credit: Andreas Rentz/Getty Images
