‘Presenteeism’ leads to staff turning up ill

A CULTURE of office “presenteeism” is leading to employees turning up to work regardless of ill health, experts have said.

People spend an average of just under two weeks a year at work while feeling unwell, according to research by Nottingham Business School (NBS). The study, based on a survey of 300 employees of a large UK utilities organisation, found that during periods of sickness workers operated at 84 per cent of full capacity on average.

But some staff reported their level of functioning as low as 20 per cent on the days they turned up feeling under the weather.

Conditions employees battled through at the office included colds and hand or wrist pain as well as mental health issues including stress, anxiety and depression, the survey found. While colds and flu affected the largest proportion of employees who still turned up to work, it was musculoskeletal conditions, followed by arthritis, which accounted for the largest number of “sickness presenteeism” days, the authors found.

The mean number of days employees reported having worked despite feeling unwell in the last year was 13.09 days. This compares to an average annual sickness absence rate of 6.63 days. It led to a lost productivity cost of £4,058.93 per person each year.

Dr Zara Whysall, co-author of the research, said: “Presenteeism isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as work can be restorative and beneficial for recovery, whereas worklessness can be detrimental to health and wellbeing.

“However, the problem is not that people are attending work unwell, but that employers are not making the necessary adjustments to adapt work to presenteeism conditions, particularly when it comes to conditions such as back pain or hand or wrist pain.”