The cost of staff presenteeism is double that of absenteeism, expert warns

The phenomenon of presenteeism — workers coming to work while sick — is the biggest threat to UK workplace productivity, its costs being 'twice that of absenteeism', Professor Sir Cary Cooper from the Manchester Business School has recently warned.

Drawing on research from the CIPD's annual Absence Management Report, Professor Cooper said: "Nearly one third of staff persistently turn up to work ill. Just 35 per cent are generally healthy and present."

"Workers coming in and doing nothing is more dangerous for the UK economy than absenteeism," he warned, highlighting that the UK ranks sixth of out the G7 nations for productivity.

Add this trend to the fact that 25 per cent of UK workers are not taking their full annual holiday entitlement, and, he warned, there is a risk that staff are not coping with the competing demands of work and home life. This results from the CIPD finding that nearly one third of parents who work more than 45 45 hours per week admitted to seeing their children for less than one hour per night on weekdays.

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

A top-range time and attendance monitoring systemcan 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.