Have you heard of the new trend called presenteeism? It’s the opposite of absenteeism and it’s threatening the health of workaholics.
We may know of people who take sick days or sickies when they’re not really sick just so that they can have the day off, but increasingly people are heading to work even when they’re ill. According to a new study people that don’t take time off when they’re sick may be setting themselves up for a heart attack.
Dr Mika Kivimaki from the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health in Helsinki and colleagues used a study of 5000 British male civil servants ages 35 to 55 to examine the relationship between sickness absenteeism, ‘sickness presenteeism’ – that is, working while ill – and the rate of serious coronary events, including fatal and non-fatal heart attacks.
I’ve heard of many other problems with presenteeism. When workers show up to work ill they run the risk of passing on their illness to other workers. Their own work also suffers for a longer period. While they feel that they’re doing the right thing, the right thing is usually to take a few days off to recover and then to head back to work at full strength.
Some months ago I saw several employers on television saying that presenteeism is costing them far more than absenteeism.
I guess we all need to listen to our bodies and rest when our bodies tell us to.
Posted by Rodney Olsen
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Hey Rodney: Your email is bouncing back, so I thought I would leave this comment, and just let you know: congratulations on being a BoB finalist!
Thanks Greg. I’ll have to check out the email address and see what’s happening.
I agree that presenteeism is bad but some employers encourage it.
Over here the average doctors fee is $40. Now take your average part time Checkout operator. They earn about that for their work in total after tax is taken out.
How many of them want to go to the doctor to take time off when it’s all of their wages. I know my employer (when I used to do that work), demanded that I get a doctors certificate if I even took one day – that was illegal but what else could you do.
At times, I admit going to work sick because I couldn’t afford not to. You would think in a industry that is dealing with both food and public health, you’d want healthy people not sick ones!
Unfortunately though, a lot of the younger ones take sick days so the rest of us used cop it. Unfair but life. Also with being such a consumer demand society, they are forced to keep pushing and pushing.
At least for me – I’m out of it! 😀
Hi, I just had a major whinge about this exact thing to my boyfriend.. and an online forum.. and then did a quick google search and found your post on it.
I think people who come to work sick are just plain selfish. They couldn’t give a $#@$ about anyone else (ie infecting them with their disgusting contagious germs) as long as they get their pay check at the end of the day!!