Understanding Presenteeism
Remember the number of times you have pushed yourself to go to work despite not Presenteeism is the act of showing up to work while sick, injured, or dealing with a health condition that reduces your ability to perform. Unlike absenteeism, where someone misses work entirely, presenteeism means you’re physically (or digitally) present but operating well below your normal capacity. Thus, it refers to the act of being physically present despite absence of one’s true potential to contribute effectively to work.
Research on Presenteeism
Miraglia et. al. (2016) conducted an analysis on correlates of presenteeism Salient correlates of working while ill included general ill health, constraints on absenteeism (e.g., strict absence policies, job insecurity), elevated job demands and felt stress, lack of job and personal resources (e.g., low support and low optimism), negative relational experiences (e.g., perceived discrimination), and positive attitudes (satisfaction, engagement, and commitment). A cross-sectional survey was conducted using the professional self-concept scale, social support rating scale, and presenteeism scale among 520 nurses from tertiary hospitals in Guangdong Province, China. Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation analysis, and hierarchical multiple linear regression were employed for data analysis. The study suggest that enhancing nurses’ professional self-identity and strengthening social support may be predictive of lower levels of presenteeism, potentially contributing to improved nursing team performance and patient safety (Li et al 2025). Another study revealed that high job demands, high efforts, low support and low rewards were associated with presenteeism. Furthermore, a significant association could be observed for both bullying and work-to-home conflict in relation to presenteeism. The subgroup analysis on a selection of workers with good self-rated health and low neuroticism generally confirmed these results. Thus, both job content related factors as well as work contextual psychosocial factors were significantly related to presenteeism. These results suggest that presenteeism is not purely driven by the health status of a worker, but that psychosocial work characteristics also play a role (Braekman, 2015). Ferreira (2019) found that negative affect and emotional exhaustion predicted productivity loss due to presenteeism positively, whereas work engagement predicted productivity loss negatively. Furthermore, they found that at a day-level, work engagement mediated the effects of emotional exhaustion and negative affect on productivity loss due to presenteeism. The findings of another study indicated that insomnia symptoms had a more significant impact on presenteeism and psychological distress than social jetlag and sleep debt. Although sleep debt might have an independent impact on presenteeism and psychological distress, social jetlag did not (Takano,2022).
Conclusion
These studies highlight the importance of acknowledging presenteeism amongst employees and also calls for further research in the area. Work environments hould be designed not just to reduce absenteeism but also presenteeism.