Posted on: Monday, October 25, 2004
Working sick costs $150B annually
By Julie Forster
Knight Ridder News Service
ST. PAUL, Minn. — For 11 years, Judy Wolf suffered from intermittent but excruciating migraine headaches while on the job as a medical transcriptionist. She said she would never take a sick day for her illness, though, unless she was "dead."
Some days the pain was so bad that the 52-year-old St. Croix Falls, Wis., resident suffered double vision. Each minute seemed like an hour.
"I tried to do 110 percent all the time," Wolf said. "But when your head is screaming and you have headphones on, you're trying to type and you're sitting at the window with the light right in your face, all you want to do is crawl in the corner and pull a blanket over you."
Some workers feel compelled to do anything just to endure another workday. Now researchers are trying to document the impact of health ailments on productivity. There's even a new workplace buzzword for it: "presenteeism," the practice of showing up for work but not being fully productive.
"It's a pretty new term, and people are looking at it in different ways. We look at it as people who come to work sick," said Lori Rosen, a workplace analyst for CCH, an employment-law information group in Riverwoods, Ill.
Productivity losses stemming from presenteeism amount to more than $150 billion a year in the United States, according to an article in this month's Harvard Business Review. A Cornell University study said presenteeism could account for up to 60 percent of the cost of worker illness, even more than the cost of absenteeism.
In a study released recently by CCH, close to 40 percent of employers said presenteeism is a problem in their organizations.
The issue is simple: Workers plagued by presenteeism can spread illness to others and lower productivity. Healthcare consultants and employee-assistance programs are now launching products to try to quantify and lessen the impact of illness and health problems on today's workplace.
With a looming serious flu season combined with the vaccine shortage, presenteeism could be a bigger issue if workers feel compelled to punch in for a full day's work.
"Being in contact with contagious individuals jeopardizes the health and productivity of all employees," Rosen said. Employers need to emphasize to employees that while they are needed at work, a healthy workplace is the top priority.
To capitalize on the new concerns, Cigna Behavioral Health in Eden Prairie, Minn., has launched a Web-based tool designed to audit a company's losses from presenteeism and to get to the root causes. The assessment starts with a 243-question worker survey. The ensuing audit will tote up the dollar losses for the company. Then it's a matter of finding better ways to engage employees and keep them healthier on the job.
Employers have done just about all they can to reduce health expenses. They've put in place higher out-of-pocket fees and tiered drug benefits, to name two. Now they're taking a broader view of healthcare beyond insurance costs — and presenteeism is critical to that view, said Zachary Meyer, senior vice president of business development for Cigna.
Cigna uses a broad definition of presenteeism that encompasses anything that distracts a worker, including outside financial worries, burnout or even water-cooler politics.
Bloomington, Minn.-based Ceridian, another company that provides employee assistance programs, also has a broad definition. It is releasing a new online tool in early 2005 that helps employees assess how engaged — or disengaged — they are in their personal and work lives. Ceridian is also releasing a booklet that gives employers suggestions on how to re-engage employees in their work. The company quotes a recent Gallup Poll that showed 19 percent of employees are so disengaged that their negative energy affects other employees.
