Why Do Sick Employees Come to Work?

In the last few years, “presenteeism” has become an even larger concern for many corporations than absenteeism. Although many HR/benefits managers hate the admittedly overused term, presenteeism is nonetheless a real issue in nearly every workplace.

Most widely,  presenteeism takes the form of staff members coming to work sick. They’re  unproductive and endanger coworkers. Meanwhile, the staff member isn’t forced to use a sick day. A bad deal for companys all the way around.

A recent survey by LifeCare revealed that 93% of employees (polled from 1,500 organizations) 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 workers cited for coming to work sick was a belief that they’d be “letting other people  down” when they call out. Almost 30 percent of respondents cited this as their primary reason. Beyond that, the top responses were –

• It’s too risky, due to office politics or culture, to take time off (26%)

• the employee is too busy at work to be able to stay home a day (15%)

• the employee saves up sick days for childcare/eldercare emergencies (12%), and

• the employee saves up sick days to use as additional vacation time (8%).

Many of these rationales are troubling to HR/benefits managers.

In the first place, supervisors who hassle workers 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 workers getting sick.

You have more power than you think to change your corporation culture when the “tough it out” mentality still applies to people  who come in sick. When  upper management is confronted with the real dollars and cents of presenteeism, decling 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 when 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 staff members who misuse their sick days by attempting to hoard them for other purposes.  

Adopting PTO, no-fault absence policies or use-it-lose-it sick leave 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 management and staff members, the less prevalent the presenteeism problem becomes.