Presenteeism

Employees Working at Diminished Capacity Cost Employers $250 Billion Per Year

The phenomenon is dubbed "presenteeism"--a sort of first cousin to employee absenteeism. Sick employees who drag themselves into work often do not work "up to speed." A recent study has put a dollar figure on that decreased productivity, and it is enough to make employers sick.

Health care consultant AdvancePCS in Irving , Texas , put the cost of presenteeism at $250 billion per year, or $2,000 per worker. The study found that a large portion of that--$180 billion--is attributable to reduced productivity caused by five maladies: headache/pain, cold/flu, fatigue/depression, digestive problems, and arthritis.

AdvancePCS arrived at its figures by analyzing data gleaned from more than 25,000 interviews with individuals. The lost productivity figure was derived from their salaries and estimates of time spent at work unproductively because of illness.

The data suggested that 80 percent of women and 70 percent of men experience one or more episodic health conditions, even something as inconspicuous as fatigue, in any two-week period. Thirty-eight percent of women and 28 percent of men reported not feeling well at work at least once every two weeks, but only 7.2 percent of women and 5.3 percent of men actually missed a day for health reasons.

Besides the top five, health conditions making people less productive include allergies, menstrual-related problems, dental problems, and prescription side effects.