Why Do Sick Employees Come to Work?

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

Most widely,  presenteeism takes the form of workers coming to work sick. They’re  unproductive and endanger coworkers. Meanwhile, the staff member is not 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 workers (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 staff members cited for coming to work sick was a belief that they’d be “letting other individuals  down” if they call out. Nearly 30% of respondents cited this as their main 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 staff member saves up sick days for childcare/eldercare emergencies (12%), and

• the worker 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 time 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  upper management is confronted with the real dollars and cents of presenteeism, lowering the problem generally 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 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 management and employees, the less prevalent the presenteeism problem becomes.