Presenteeism is costing employers more than absenteeism

By Sumudu Rajaguru

It is very important to understand what is presenteeism and what is absenteeism before further discuss this matter. Absenteeism happens when the employee is not at their workplace. It can be several reasons. Presenteeism mean employees are reporting to work and they are not working up to their full capacity and capability due to illness or mental health challenges. However, presenteeism is not a result of workers not wanting to perform to their full potential.?Typically, the employees want to complete their work tasks satisfactorily but simply cannot perform at their standard capacity. Unfortunately, this results in a?dramatic dip in productivity.?

Factors Cause Presenteeism

There are several reasons can be created the presenteeism. There can be several health issues. As well as poor workplace morale or inadequate paid sick leave or paid time off. Unrealistic expectations also can create some presenteeism.

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It is important to understand about the costs of Absenteeism and Presenteeism also. However, calculating the exact costs of absenteeism and presenteeism can be a challenging process. According to the research it is found that cost of presenteeism is around 10 times more than the cost of absenteeism.

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If absenteeism happened company has to pay only the agreed salary for that member and if the number of absent days increase more than the legally accepted levels, those leaves go as no pay leaves. So, organization has to spend some cost up to some limits. However, every organization has some daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly targets. All production targets plan based on the number of employees in payroll and daily projections prepared based on daily present members. So, if some employees attend to work and if he/she can’t perform based on the capability due to some health or mental issue, all the production targets can be destroyed. That is huge cost to the organization. Because every day organization has to spend some overhead cost and organization has to produce some defined minimum level of production to hit the breakeven points. Because of the presenteeism organization can’t achieve the required targets and financially it is big cost.

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Other than the operational target achievement, some time organization has to spend money for presenteeism employees to provide the medical facilities. That may be from internal medical room as well as it may goes up to hospitalizations. So, organization has to spend several costs relating to the presentism employees. Below costs can included for the presenteeism.

-??????? Employee salaries

-??????? Transport cost

-??????? Loss of production cost

-??????? Line balancing issues because of the presenteeism.

-??????? Medical cost

-??????? Special foods and other refreshment related cost.

-??????? Damage cost

-??????? Overhead cost.

Because of all factors mentioned above, it is true presenteeism is much more cost when compare with absenteeism cost.