Employers face massive rise in staff presenteeism

More than a third of organizations are facing a significant increase in the level of staff presenteeism (workers coming to work while sick), figures from CIPD's recent Absence Management Survey 2015 strongly suggest.

The survey of 600 employers, representing more than 1.5 million staff and conducted in partnership with Simply Health, revealed that this is the fifth consecutive year that the number of employees attending work despite being sick has risen.

The research found that presenteeism is more likely to occur in organisations where long working hours are the norm and operational demands take precedence over employee well-being. For this reason, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that employers who report an increase in presenteeism are nearly twice as likely (41 per cent) to also report an increase in stress-related absence. The percentage of employers reporting this type of sickness absence rises to 51 per cent in public sector organisations where the austerity cuts have taken a huge toll.

Jill Miller, research adviser at the CIPD and co-author of the report, said some people may be 'pulling sickies' due to conflicting demands from home and work, and organisations offering flexible working and leave for family circumstances were less likely to report non-genuine absence in their top causes of absence.

"The value of such practices is likely to grow as demographic changes increase the caring responsibilities of employees," the report concluded.

Tensor Time and Attendance Systems — the perfect sickness absence monitoring solution

A top-range time and attendance monitoring system can easily determine the best strategies to tackle the problem of excessive presenteeism and determine employers to set comprehensive policies to support employers in dealing with sickness absence.

The Tensor WinTA.NET integrated time and attendance system and workforce management solution incorporates a dedicated Absence Planning and Entitlement Management feature. It comes pre-loaded with graphical calendar charts that provide a colourful way of viewing an individual's or a department's absence records.

Each employee can be allocated different entitlements for absence such as annual leave or allowed sickness. As absence is booked and taken, the remainder available for each entitlement is updated. Entitlement formulae are used to calculate more complex entitlements calculated on a rising scale based upon length of service.

If you'd like to find out more about the Tensor workforce management solutions, just contact our team or Book a Demo, we'll be more than happy to answer all of your questions and queries.