SuperManager: Illness and Presenteeism at Work

We’ve talked about the emotional aspects of presenteeism and how it affects the office. Now we’re continuing our discussion with illness and presenteeism and what to do about it.

Listen in by being a fly on the wall in this podcast discussion with:

Samantha Naes – CN Video Production
Victoria Wors – Wors Consulting
Mary Kutheis – MCK Coaching
Joel Emery – Ignite Strategies Midwest
Kim Baker – Vivid Performance Group
Maggie Peterson – C6 Solutions, LLC

Christine Lawrence
You’re listening to Super Manager, the podcast for people who manage people and business. With ideas, trends and expert interviews to help you be a super manager.

Samantha Naes
So this week’s topic is gonna be on presenteeism, and I have got my team of super friends with me. Today we have

Vicky Wors
Vicky Wars, Wars Consulting,

Joel Emery
Joel Emery with Ignite Strategies. I served as a sales systems architect for small and mid sized businesses.

Kim Baker
Kim Baker, with Vivid Performance Groups, and I help organizations to align in, synergize their human capital culture and change agility.

Maggie Peterson
And Maggie Peterson with C6 Solutions. I work with human resource organizations on copy and content, marketing,

Samantha Naes
oh, and I’m Samantha Naes with CN Video. We do corporate video production.

Kim Baker
So it seems that when you take a look at the literature and what’s being talked about this, there seems to be a pretty clear line between engagement and presenteeism. Presenteeism being defined is working when one is ill or doesn’t feel well.

Samantha Naes
Okay,

Kim Baker
So it’s people showing up to work when they’re sick or they don’t feel well. So maybe I don’t have something contagious, but maybe I didn’t sleep well last night. Maybe I was up with a sick child. Maybe the dog got me up three times, right? I don’t feel well, but I show up to work

Samantha Naes
Right

Kim Baker
So the question is why? You know, is that the environment? Is that the type of work you do? I think this will probably continue because the way our work is delivered is changing. So when I entered the workforce, we were much more solo and siloed. Now, so much of our work is done in networks and teams and we’re so dependent upon each other. If I can’t come into work today, what impact is there to my colleagues? I needed to finish this report to hand it off to somebody else who’s got to do something and hand it off to somebody else. So because of this we depend upon each other so much more than we did in the past and that will only increase. So I think we’re going to probably see presenteeism continue to increase as we’re more networked.

Maggie Peterson
I think one thing one area where we do have an advantage in being able to address it though, is technology and work from home. I remember when I entered to work for his computers and being able to work from home over computer didn’t happen. Emails? No people weren’t connected through email. Facebook. What was it “My Space”, I think, was the first social media, and that didn’t exist when I entered the workforce. And yet it’s all available now and its ways that people can work now. So if you do have that day when you’re really not up to par and I do suffer from migraines, and I remember times when I would be able to stay home, take care of the headache in the morning and then work as I was able to later in the afternoon, still getting work done, being able to take care of what I needed to do. So I think computers and technology an awesome

Vicky Wors
I think. I think we’re slowly retiring, let’s put it that way, those that had the idea of, Well, if you work from home, I don’t know that you’re working.

Samantha Naes
I think the whole work from home thing has really changed because there’s a phase there where everybody wanted to work from home. I’m finding now and I think we had a conversation about this in another podcast episode about remote teams where now it’s the trend, not toe work from home. Like a lot of companies used to offer that as a benefit. Now you have people that are like, I want to be engaged with the team. I want to be present in the office. So I guess we’re talking about kind of in between where you need to be able to work from home when you’re sick.

Samantha Naes
Yeah, I thought presenteeism had more to do with emotional wellness than physical wellness,

Kim Baker
Both of them. But it’s it’s about illness.

Maggie Peterson
When you look at the academic research it is about illness. It might be mental illness, not just cold flu type illness. But academic it is illness.

Kim Baker
And some of it’s actually so specific. It’s looking in certain settings and certain diseases. So it could be like a GI disease or something.

Samantha Naes
So could this. I wish we had Jerry here. Could this lead to discrimination where somebody has some type of illness that could cause a lot of presenteeism, you know what I mean. They they might be less productive because they’re prone to migranes.

Vicky Wors
Well, but then what Jerry would say okay with

Samantha Naes
Oh now we’re speaking for Jerry? (laughing). I’m sure he’d appreciate an HR person,

Vicky Wors
with, Hey Jerry and you know okay,

Vicky Wors
but anyway, the idea is a by designing the job’s, understanding what’s expected of your workforce. And when you’re interviewing and you’re hiring people, this is the understanding. Legally speaking, you have already established the parameters and the new hire, the new employee has agreed to that. They understand what the parameters are.

Samantha Naes
So so do you fire someone for not being present if they’re going through something and they’re not meeting expectations because they’re unable to focus their unable to concentrate. I mean, you’ve got your

Vicky Wors
Americans with disabilities.

Samantha Naes
No no no… I was talking about the counselling, the employee assistance program, and you’re your cry rooms or what was the more pleasant term for that? Your…

Kim Baker
Mindfulness room? I don’t know what they actually titled it.

Samantha Naes
You, like, try those things. And if it’s not working, then…

Vicky Wors
Well, you gotta know where to draw the line. I mean, this is a business. This is a profitable entity. If everybody’s in the cry room at one time, okay… it’s it’s okay. So it has to get to? “Why does this entity exist?” And why am I paying people and giving benefits?

Samantha Naes
Right, you’ve got measures and they’ve got to meet those measures. But I just see this becoming a growing problem.

Vicky Wors
Well, I mean, but it will be the proof.

Joel Emery
So we’re talking about the presenteeism. So I’m curious to know, in the academic area where you guys have done some more research, so thinking about some things with my Children, for example. So I have a child who has repeated migranes, and there’s only a certain number of days he’s allowed to miss from school. So at some point, I have to say, I don’t care how sick you are. You need to suck it up and get into the classroom. Because if he doesn’t then very quickly he potentially could not graduate from school.

Samantha Naes
Right.

Joel Emery
So that’s clearly at a point that

Samantha Naes
That’s a really good question.

Joel Emery
you know, he’s 15 years old at this point, that that’s already beginning, and I’m doing it to him. The school is doing it to him. I mean, these are the expectations that are being set.

Samantha Naes
well, and the workforce is going to do it to him as well, when you know, you’ve only got so many sick days, too.

Joel Emery
But also, it’s state law. If you’re not in school for X number of days a semester, you don’t get credit

Vicky Wors
And why is that to some extent?

Samantha Naes
But you bring up a good question. What do you do in a situation like that? Because that’s gonna carry over to his adult life. And what we’re talking about, presenteeism in the office. I’m sure you do have people that have regular migraines or have illnesses that keep them for coming in. And you only have so many sick days. So does that make that person not employable? I mean what…

Vicky Wors
You’re teaching how to manage it?

Kim Baker
Well, a couple things. So when you look at the illness and presenteeism, it tends to be more chronic illnesses. So, unfortunately, migraines, colorectal issues, allergies, things that… So cancer and heart disease and strokes that tends to take people out of the office that they can’t work. So, yeah, how do you manage these chronic things? The law says the employer has to make some sort of reasonable accommodation, right? But at the end of the day, when you can’t do your job when you can’t fulfill that requirement. Yeah, then the employer has that ability. Migraines, are tough because you can’t work. Some of the other stuff. So I knew had a friend and her husband had horrible crones, and he had to work from home, but he could do it, but it was just part of his job. It was understood he worked from home, and that’s the kind of thing that you know the employer could make a reasonable accommodation. It wasn’t an issue.

Samantha Naes
If he’s still meeting the requirements of the job, then it’s not.

Maggie Peterson
Another management strategy is to keep your doctors involved, keep medical assistance involved and trying to find those triggers that you can medically treat to help manage whatever is going on from the migraines to some of the other issues as well.

Vicky Wors
It becomes the individual’s ability to manage as well as a company’s design of the work.

Samantha Naes
But we have. So we have privacy laws having to do with health related issues.

Vicky Wors
Hippa.

Samantha Naes
HIPPA. so people then should talk to their supervisor. If they’re having health related issues?

Vicky Wors
Well they don’t have to tell them the nitty gritty. It’s up to the employees. And once an employee, however, opens that can of worms, then the employer can talk to them about it once the employee brings it up. And most applications, it does ask, Do you have any physical inabilities to do the work? If an employee says no, I can do the work, then there’s an expectation that you will do the work. If they put well, I do have some limitations. You don’t have to give the full reasons, but there are some, but it still opens that door for a discussion.

Samantha Naes
I feel like more often it’s just something that happens. You discover at the office that someone is not being productive or something has gone wrong. And then you okay, what’s the problem? And you kind of try to drill down and figure out what’s going on here. And then it all boils down to… There’s a personal issue at home, or there’s something going on that’s causing the distraction that’s keeping the person from being able to be productive or actually being present in what they’re doing. It kind of goes back to people noticing the warning signs. Somebody is doing just fine, and then all of a sudden, they’re not. Things are slipping and and you kind of look into what’s going on. And it’s this presenteeism issue

Vicky Wors
Well, you’ve got. And we haven’t touched on this other aspect of what happens when you have one person that the company is bending over backwards to try to help. Then you have,

Samantha Naes
the neglected child?

Vicky Wors
Then you have the co workers that start getting upset. Why? I mean enough is enough. I’m having to do part of their work as well as my own. I’m not getting any more money for it.

Samantha Naes
their spending all their time in a cry room while I’m getting their job done .

Vicky Wors
While I’m over here doing…

Samantha Naes
Now I need the cry room. (laughing)

Vicky Wors
Yeah, so it requires balance. It requires emotional intelligence. It requires understating it all. Gets back once again to job design. It all gets back to building trust when you get to the HIPPA thing. You were talking about as far as discussions, and once again, we need to have professional Human Resources. People that are trained to handle these things. They are actually there as an employee advocate.

Samantha Naes
Joel. Was there something you wanted to…

Joel Emery
Well I had a question. So I’m the only male sitting around a table of females. And

Samantha Naes
what’s your point Joel?

Joel Emery
One question I have now absenteeism, permissiveness on you’re using time off from work, however you want to phrase presenteeism. What role does gender play in what is generally perceived as acceptable for time to miss from work or not and expectations? I mean, I’ve seen workplaces where I’m just using an arbitrary example. This isn’t necessarily the norm, but that’s what’s an anecdote. But the men are sure expected to show up no matter what’s going on. But the women, oh they’re women, they could be sick. Now, I suspect that’s not the way it work most of the time . And I’m by no means saying that’s the norm.

Vicky Wors
No, I’ve heard it, I’ve heard it in human resource

Maggie Peterson
and I’ll give a personal example. I got really pissed in one job when everyone kept talking about how emotional women were, and it was the men throwing a temper tantrums. So it’s Yeah, it’s stated. It’s something we’ve got to deal with, but it’s not limited to one gender or the other. We’ve just got to realize it crosses

Joel Emery
so but but in terms of

Samantha Naes
I’ve personally never felt like anyone was more lenient with me as far as missing work. Although I don’t have kids.

Joel Emery
or less lenient. either way, that was one specific example I was thinking of. But how does this work? Is there a greater degree of permissiveness for either men or women missing work?

Kim Baker
So I’m gonna throw another factor into it and talk about perfectionism, and workaholism. So one of the studies I found, and it gets to gender. It’s the only reason I’m bringing it in. Where they found there was a correlation between someone being a perfectionist and then a workaholic, and then a higher degree of presenteeism. however, they definitely found women were actually less likely. You know, while there definitely was a perfectionism and the workaholism when they compared men to women, women were less likely to engage in presenteeism, so they were more willing to stay home. Could be because gender expectations. The one thing I have seen change, I’m gonna say over the past five years, is more and more men who stay home with sick kids.

Samantha Naes
Yeah.

Vicky Wors
Oh, it’s wonderful.

Kim Baker
Yeah, that’s the one thing that it seems to me. Now maybe they’re working from home, but they’re willing to say I’m staying home.

Samantha Naes
Well, I was gonna bring up earlier maternity leave too, you know? Now you have maternity leave for the dad to stay home in some places for the dad to stay home and kinda help out.

Joel Emery
I had a traditionalist client asked me. I had to leave their office early to go pick up a sick child one day. He said, Isn’t there a Mrs. Joel who could go take care of that for you?

Samantha Naes
Oh, okay. On that note, does anybody have a horror story related to presenteeism or lack thereof?

Maggie Peterson
You know, I did work in an office at one point where it was going into November and a flu like virus started going around.

Samantha Naes
Yeah,

Maggie Peterson
And when people would stay home, they were home for three or four days. The vomit, diarrhea, all of that. And because people were still going into work when they were sick, it actually did two rounds through the full staff. I don’t think there was a single person on the staff that did not get hit with it, and it was doing two rounds. Some people were hit a third time. When you’re sick, there’s a need to stay home.

Samantha Naes
You know, I know it’s rude, but when somebody comes into an office where I’m working and they’re sick, I’m like, Whoa, hold on. I’m gonna go wash my hands. Don’t, did you touch? It’s not exactly polite, but

Maggie Peterson
I got a whole bunch of laughs because they understood when I walked into a meeting with the big bottle of hand sanitizer

Samantha Naes
A mask.

Christine Lawrence
Thanks for listening to Super Manager by CN Video Production. Visit our website at cn-video.com for additional episodes and lots of Super Manager Resources. Or give us a call at 314 video me.