Staying home can help productivity

Your colleague in the next cubicle has provided a symphony of sneezing and hacking all day and you are on your third bottle of hand sanitizer as you curse the “conscientiousness� of employees who feel compelled to work when they’re sick.

You have just witnessed presenteeism – code word for working when sick – and a new study out of Concordia University shows that it may be even more costly to the workplace than absenteeism.

The Concordia study by Gary Johns, a management professor at the John Molson School of Business, comes on the heels of another study out of Queen’s University that also shows the costly repercussions of presenteeism.

So what’s the harm in trying to be a trooper and show up at the office when you’re nursing a cold?

Well, it hampers your productivity, it likely slows down your recovery and you may be spreading germs to others.

In an era of SARS epidemics and H1N1 flu pandemics, heroic efforts to drag yourself into the office with an illness could have dire consequences.

The study by Johns concludes that “instances of going to work while ill likely cost the economy more and do more damage to the aggregate quality of working life.�

Johns’ study shows that people who are insecure about their jobs, partake in a lot of teamwork on the job or deal directly with customers tend to engage in presenteeism.

Of the 444 people he surveyed, he found there was an average of three days of presenteeism every six months – about twice as many days as they were absent.

“There is much more productivity lost due to presenteeism than absenteeism because you’re a presentee on more days,� said Johns, whose article was just published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology.

That’s similar to findings of a major study by medical researchers at Queen’s University, funded by an independent grant from Afexa Life Sciences, the maker of COLD-FX, which recently showed that it costs employers twice as much in productivity losses for employees who come to work sick than for those who stay home.

The study, by Richard Birtwhistle of the Centre for Studies in Primary Care at Queen’s, cites a Thomas Bramley study that the common cold results in an economic loss of $16.7 billion for presenteeism, while half that amount – $8 billion – is attributed to absenteeism.

The study shows that 83 per cent of people said in a survey they continue to work or attend school while experiencing flu-like symptoms.

The study goes on to say that there are 214 million lost workday equivalents due to the common cold each year in the U.S., of which 69 million are attributed to absenteeism and the remaining 145 million from on-the-job work loss.

All to say: Going to work sick is far from noble and is more detrimental – and costly – to companies than calling in sick.

Johns said while companies can’t necessarily work to curb presenteeism as they do with absenteeism, he does believe they need to discuss it and set up guidelines for employees.

“If you’re contagious, people need to know it’s okay to miss work,� he said. “And don’t come in if it’s going to exacerbate your condition.

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