Sick and In Work?

Why do employees come into work when ill is the interesting question raised by a new study for the Work Foundation

The study doesn’t exactly answer the question, but it does highlight many interesting issues.

One such is terminology. The idea of someone being physically in work but mentally elsewhere, for reasons of either physical or mental ill-health, has been commonly described as ‘presenteeism’. The new report prefers ‘sickness presence’ not least because of the link that implies with sickness absence.

The report is clear that sickness presence affects many more employees than sickness absence, up to 45% of staff claimed to be present while ‘sick’ over a four week period.

The study finds sickness absence to be much more closely related to performance that sickness absence, which alone would make it an issue of importance to managers in the present climate.

It identifies three key drivers, including work-related stress, pressure from managers and financial worries. We find this last point interesting as we find take up of debt counselling amongst clients of our EAP generally disappointing.

The study looked at one particular company, AXA-PPP, but the outcomes certainly chime with our experience of schools. It may well be that things are even worse in education. There is enormous personal and vocational pressure amongst all school staff to turn up; even more so with the advent of ‘rarely cover’.

So what does all this mean?

Firstly, anyone thinking about sickness absence alone needs to think again. Organisational effectiveness is impacted more by sickness presence, so things may be worse than many managers realise.

Secondly, it seems likely that many of the organisational developmental strategies, such as our organisational Well-Being programme, can have an even greater impact on performance provided you aware of issues like sickness presence and tailor the interventions accordingly. Ensuring that organisational wellbeing is complemented by individual wellbeing services, such as an EAP and personal health services, can generate even more positive outcomes.

Emphasising access to financial advice and guidance seems, if the report is right, to be particularly important.

It is also clear that training managers to be aware of and the effectively manage staff wellbeing will have enormous benefits for organisations. And given the coming squeeze in the public sector, intelligent staff management is going to be hugely important.

Paying attention to report such as this one from the Work Foundation, and ensuring that you invest in staff wellbeing is looking more and more like a necessity for schools and other organisations everywhere.