“Presenteeism is part of our culture of work,” said Vicky Lovell, director of employment and work/life programs at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, a nonprofit group. “Some workers think the company is going to fall apart without them. But many simply fear being suspended or fired if they don’t show up.”
In a telephone survey of nearly 1,000 adults conducted by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, more than one-third of workers said they felt pressured to go to work when sick. About the same number reported that they had picked up the flu from a colleague in the workplace.
In a recent survey of 326 human resources executives by the research firm Wolters Kluwer, 56 percent said presenteeism had become a problem in their companies, up from 39 percent two years ago.
“We work in a Dilbert environment these days,” said Brett Gorovsky, an analyst at Wolters Kluwer. “We’re in closed office spaces, where germs are a bigger concern. And there’s downsizing. There are fewer people to backfill now, so workers more often feel they have to show up.”
Because of lost productivity, ill workers on the job account for as much as 60 percent of corporate health costs, according to researchers at Cornell University — more than absentee workers, and far more than companies pay in direct medical and disability costs.
