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 Understanding what motivates workers to remain on the job when
they’re sick may help employers develop sick-day policies that may
be more effective at preventing the spread of contagious diseases in
the workplace, study co-author Gary Johns, a business and management
researcher at Concordia University in Montreal, said by email.
“In the case of contagious illness, the spread of the illness to
co-workers and customers or clients is an obvious concern,” Johns
said. “On the other hand, if illness is neither contagious nor
debilitating, it might be self-affirming for people to go to work
when not perfectly fit.”
Johns and co-author Mariella Miraglia of the Norwich Business School
at the University of East Anglia in the U.K. analyzed data from 61
previous studies involving more than 175,000 people in more than 30
countries to assess what might motivate people to come to work when
they were sick.
The two researchers refer to working while sick as “presenteeism.”
In the studies they analyzed, presenteeism was often linked to
workplace policies to reduce absenteeism, such as disciplinary
actions, limited paid sick leave, or medical certification required
for sick time, the analysis found.
Job demands also came into play, with heavy workloads,
understaffing, overtime and looming deadlines all motivating people
to work while sick.
“Tight restrictions on paid sick leave, such as requiring a doctor’s
note to validate an employee’s illness,” can limit the effectiveness
of giving people paid time off to prevent the spread of disease in
the workplace, Dr. Eric Widera, a researcher at the University of
California, San Francisco, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by
email.
One shortcoming of the analysis is that the researchers lacked data
to properly assess the role of depression and mental health in
presenteeism, the authors acknowledge in the Journal of Occupational
Health Psychology. It’s possible that workers suffering from mental
illness might not perceive themselves as working while sick.
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Many workers may believe their jobs are on the line if they stay
home, or feel that they can’t afford the lost income from an unpaid
day off, noted Supriya Kumar, a public health researcher at the
University of Pittsburgh who wasn’t involved in the study.
Workers who feel they have no choice but to work while sick can
still help prevent the spread of contagious diseases like influenza
by avoiding face-to-face conversations with co-workers, and by
washing their hands frequently, Kumar said by email.
Still, managers who realize why people work when they’re sick may be
able to change policies so employees are motivated to stay home when
they’re contagious.
“When people stay home when sick with a contagious disease like
influenza, they actually reduce the likelihood of future illness
among co-workers and thus reduce absenteeism in the workplace,”
Kumar said. “Managers who realize this and promote stay-at-home
behavior in cases of infectious illness are likely to have a more
healthy workplace.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1Hvx77L Journal of Occupational Health
Psychology, online November 9, 2015.
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