Sick and at work?
Thursday, 15 April 2010
Katherine Ashby
Category: Health and Wellbeing
At a well attended event this morning we launched the findings of our new report, Why do employees come to work when ill? sponsored by AXA-PPP. The event was expertly chaired by The Independent’s health editor, Jeremy Laurance. Stephen Bevan, our managing director, set the importance of employee health and wellbeing in context, helping to prepare the ground for me to present the report’s key findings, implications and recommendations.
Jeremy opened the event by saying that for him sickness presence was a new concept - and he is not alone in this. Although sickness absence has received a great deal of attention (especially how much it can cost), work on sickness presence - or employees coming to work when their self perception of health justifies taking time off - is still in its infancy here in the UK.
We hope the report raises awareness amongst employers that sickness presence can be an important indicator of employee health and wellbeing and that they may be at risk of underestimating employee ill health and missing warning signals by focusing on absence alone.
As our investigation demonstrates, we found coming to work unwell was associated with higher levels of absence, lower levels of psychological wellbeing and lower performance.
Employees experiencing higher levels of work-related stress, those who felt under pressure from managers and peers to attend work unwell, and those with personal financial difficulties were the most likely to have the highest amount of sickness presence.
All this could have started to sound a bit bleak - but the good news is that organisations have the potential to influence many of these factors. Recommendations from the research focus on addressing workplace cultural issues around attendance management, including reviewing line manager capability around psychological wellbeing and work-related stress.
These recommendations were picked up at the event by Ian Clabby, one of our research sponsors and head of engagement at AXA PPP. He gave an engaging talk about AXA PPP’s rationale for sponsoring the work and outlined what they had learnt from the project. We heard how the research has illuminated that what they call health and wellbeing, but what employees see as absence management – and they want this disconnect to be addressed. He also highlighted that psychological wellbeing needs to be better understood by line managers. As flagged up in the report, Ian talked about how the fit note can be used as an opportunity to think more creatively about the types of workplace adjustments that can be made when employees are ill but want to work.
A lively question and answer session concluded the event, including comments from Michael Parsonage from the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health on the importance of recognising the role of mental health in presenteeism.
As Jeremy pointed out, most people don’t yet know much about the potential impact of sickness presence and those who do understand the issues don’t yet know the term. We hope this study begins to raise awareness of the issue – and of potential ways of addressing it - and we look forward to a proper debate on this important topic. You are invited to start that debate here by leaving a comment!
