Wellness Programs : Why Do Sick Staff Members Come to Work?
In the last few years, “presenteeism” has become an even bigger concern for a lot of businesss than absenteeism. Even though many HR/benefits managers hate the admittedly overused term, presenteeism is notwithstanding a real issue in almost every workplace.
Most widely, presenteeism takes the form of staff members coming to work sick. They’re unproductive and endanger coworkers. 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 staff (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 published study looked at the reasons why folks do it.
Troubling rationales
The No. 1 reason workers cited for coming to work sick was a belief that they’d be “letting other people down” when they call out. Almost 30% of respondents cited this as their main reason. Beyond that, the top responses were –
• It’s too risky, as a result of office politics or culture, to take time off (26%)
• The staff member is too busy at work to be able to stay home a day (15%)
• The worker saves up sick days for childcare/eldercare emergencies (12%), and
• The staff member saves up sick days to use as additional vacation time (8%).
A lot of of these rationales are troubling to HR/benefits managers.
In the first place, supervisors who hassle staff 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 staff getting sick.
You’ve more power than you think to change your organization culture when the “tough it out” mentality still applies to people who come in sick. When upper-level management is confronted with the real dollars and cents of presenteeism, decreasing the problem usually 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 decreasing 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 upper management and staff, the less prevalent the presenteeism problem becomes.