Does absence make the heart grow fonder?
This article dealt with a burgeoning problem known as “presenteeism,” a situation that arises when sick employees drag their forlorn carcasses into the office and waste everybody else’s time by hacking their way through the working day on an empty tank. The danger here is two-fold: First, employees who are under the weather generally do substandard work; second, sick employees can make other staffers sick as well, a development that can be catastrophic in a small office. In the words of Ronald Kessler, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, “Presenteeism is twice as big as absenteeism in America, and accounts for two-thirds of the productivity losses that occur at work.” The Journal also cited a study in the universally revered Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, which reached the same basic conclusion.
