It's happened to all of us. There have been times when we woke up in the morning and didn't feel well. It may be a headache, perhaps a flu onset, or a seasonal allergy that causes it. It would be better for us to stay at home when we feel this way. However, on the other hand, dozens of jobs are waiting for you at the workplace, we do not want the jobs to pile up or the organization is shrinking and we are afraid of being one of the dismissed employees. For these and similar reasons, we go to work, but now there is another problem. We are at work, but we feel sluggish and lazy. We have difficulty concentrating on a task, our productivity drops and our manager notes this as a problem.
Hopper (2012) has described presenteeism with a scenario that may seem quite familiar to all of us, as above. However, if we still need a definition, we can briefly describe presenteeism as the presence of an employee at work for individual or organizational reasons when he or she is not feeling well, but not being able to work efficiently.
Health is the most valuable asset of man and it affects all the basic necessities of life. One of these basic requirements is work. Doubtless, a person's working capacity is also highly affected by his health. When employees feel they have no choice but to come to work, not only will their productivity drop, their current health condition may worsen, and they may put others at risk of contracting the same illness.
In that case we can ask employees the question “Why are you still coming to work if you don't feel well?”. There are multiple possible answers to this question. Some of these are employer expectations, little or no leaves, job insecurity, inadequate staffing, irreplaceability, time pressure, desire to save time, fear of dismissal… As can be seen, there are many reasons forcing employees to go to work when they are sick.
So, what can be done to reduce presenteeism? The shortest answer to this question is not to push employees to work while they are sick. It is known today that health is a driving force on performance and employees cannot leave their personal health status on the doorstep when they go to work. For this reason, employers should create a moderate organizational culture towards their most important asset, the people working in their institutions, and regulate their leave policies accordingly. Because the most important resource for a successful organization is human resources. Both mental and physical health has a positive effect on human productivity and it should not be forgotten that healthy employees will lead to healthy organizations.
Research Assistant Semanur OKTAY
Resource:
Hooper, P.D.(2012).Presenteeism. Cid Management, www.cidmcorp.com, 1-8.
