SAEHWS - Identify and manage Presenteeism Risks

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The South African Employee Health and Wellness Survey

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Identify and manage Presenteeism Risks

Applies to: Presenteeism

The SAEHWS will enable you to:

Identify presenteeism risks.

Identify workplace factors contributing to presenteeism.

Customise interventions to curb the risk of presenteeism.

Calculate the cost of presenteeism in your organisation*.

*subject to the availability of objective data

Many organisations are mostly worried about absenteeism levels and the management thereof. However, research has shown that presenteeism proved to be more costly to organisations because it directly impacts on productivity and service delivery. It is estimated that presenteeism is costing US companies $150 billion per year. The term presenteeism has been defined in 1994 by UK Professor Cary Cooper. He defined presenteeism as "workers who remain on the job but who are not as productive as usual due to illness, stress or any other type of distraction".

Presenteeism is categorised in three types, namely:

	Impaired presenteeism: Employees despite complaints and ill health go to work (it is not pretending to be ill to avoid job duties or misusing company time at work but really suffering from an illness). A consequence of employees coming to work when they suffer from a communicable illness such as flu, infect others and thereby lower productivity further.
	Over-commitment presenteeism: Employees put in excessive effort and work hours as an expression of commitment or a way of coping with job insecurity or applying high personal standards or having high ambition, etc. These employees are often so busy with so many tasks; do not ensure sufficient effort-recovery, resulting in reduced productivity and quality of outputs because of higher stress and exhaustion levels.
	Disengagement presenteeism: Disengagement presenteeism is founded in employees lacking the motivation to work optimally; i.e., employees do not invest energy in a focused way in their work, mainly because they face demands and lack personal and/or job resources affecting their motivational wellness and morale.

The SAEHWS, utilising a multi-dimensional algorithm, predicts presenteeism risks in terms of the above categories. In addition, the SAEHWS also provides for reasons contributing to these risks in order for management and HR practitioners to focus interventions to prevent the risk of presenteeism.

References:
Susan Chesney. 2008. Management Trends: Preventing presenteeism, CMA Management.

First Alert. 2008. Absenteeism and Presenteeism Are Costly Problems, Non-Profit World, Vol 26, No 5, www.snpo.org

Jacqueline G. Willingham. 2008. Managing presenteeism and Disability to Improve Productivity, Benefits & Compensation Digest, Vol 45, No 12.

Paul Hemp. 2004. Presenteeism: At Work-But Out of It, Harvard Business Review, October 2004.