You’ve heard of absenteeism: the problem of employees
habitually missing work. Well, presenteeism can be even worse if sick people
come to work instead of staying home in bed. This is particularly problematic
when health care professionals show up for hospital shifts while suffering from
contagious diseases. How often does this happen? According to doctors from
Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School and the University of
Chicago, all the time.
The researchers gave an anonymous questionnaire to 150
resident physicians in Illinois. 77% of the residents reported that they had
come to work with flu-like symptoms at least once within the past year. I
suspect that the remaining 23% just didn’t happen to have the flu that year. Ominously,
9% thought they might have given the illness to a patient, and 21% thought
another sick resident might have done so.
There were a number of reasons the doctors gave for not staying
home when ill, most commonly that they felt their patients and their colleagues
needed them. The authors suggest that residents be given more guidance about
the necessity of not coming to work sick. Most of us don’t like to see our
colleagues coughing and sneezing in the workplace, but it can be deadly in a
hospital.
One of the most insidious forms of presenteeism is that presented by working family caregivers. Statistically they arrive late and leave and take unscheduled days off to attend to caregiving problems. Unlike illness which has a finite time cycle, caregiving is ongoing, multi-year and requires energy, resources and emotions that cant be limited to just non work periods. It is "infectious" as the sharing of the stresses spreads to the water cooler and cubicle. Kept under the radar to avoid conflicts with bosses, it is one of the best kept secrets in business. With 50 million caregiver and the average age is 47-50, it would seem that informal (unpaid) family caregiving also "infects" a large percentage of the corporate "knowledge holders" who are middle and upper management by this time (47-50). The productivity loss is huge.
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