Why Do Sick Employees Come to Work?

In the last few years, “presenteeism” has become an even bigger concern for many employers than absenteeism. Even though many HR/benefits managers hate the admittedly overused term, presenteeism is nonetheless a real issue in almost every worksite.

Most widely,  presenteeism takes the form of employees coming to work sick. They’re  unproductive and endanger colleagues. Meanwhile, the employee is not forced to use a sick day. A bad deal for employers all the way around.

A recent survey by LifeCare revealed that 93 percent of staff members (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 study  looked at the reasons why folks do it.

Troubling rationales

The No. 1 reason staff cited for coming to work sick was a belief that they’d be “letting other individuals  down” when they call out. Nearly 30% of respondents cited this as their primary reason. Beyond that, the top responses were -

o  It’s too risky, because of office politics or culture, to take time off (26%)

o  The worker is too busy at work to be able to stay home a day (15%)

o  The staff member saves up sick days for childcare/eldercare emergencies (12%), and

o  The employee 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 members 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 members getting sick.

You have 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 level management is confronted with the real dollars and cents of presenteeism, lowering the problem typically 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 â.” as evidenced by the survey â.” of staff 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 decling 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 executive management and staff, the less prevalent the presenteeism problem becomes.