You’re sneezy, sniffly, wheezy and probably whiny. You should be at home, lying on the couch in front of “The Price Is Right.”
But you’re not. You’re at your cubicle, with bloodshot eyes staring at a computer screen and a bottle of DayQuil at your side.
Even worse, your miserable self is not alone. Those who study these things say “presenteeism,” as the insistence on coming to work when sick has been dubbed, is widespread.
And with flu now at its seasonal peak there is no doubt thousands of workers are sitting queasily at their desks.
That’s a problem.
Public health officials say sick-at-work employees spread disease and make flu outbreaks worse than they need to be. And employers say those who arrive at the office sick hurt productivity because they spread their illness to healthy co-workers.
But nearly everybody, it seems, comes to work ill – even those who really know better.
“We’ve seen it here at the Health Department,” said Glynnis Hunt, health education coordinator for Schenectady, N.Y., County public health services. “We have one person come in sick, then a few days later we have 12 people out.”
The complaint is common: 56 percent of employers surveyed last year told Illinois- based CCH, a publisher of human resources data, that presenteeism is a problem. In 2004, 39 percent of employers said it was a concern.
The problem is growing, it seems, even as connectivity trends suggest it should be otherwise.
“In today’s world, people definitely feel that pressure to always be there and always push through it,” said Paula Heller, director of human resources at Clough Harbour & Associates, an Albany, N.Y., engineering company. “But with technology, it doesn’t have to be that way. You can be at home in your pajamas and still log on.”
So why do people do it? Why do they insist on dragging their feverish bones in?
Well, according to a poll conducted by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, 35 percent of workers feel pressure to go to work when they have the flu. Of those, 60 percent cited concern about not getting their work done and 48 percent said they would feel guilty if they didn’t show.
And there is, of course, a subset of the population for whom the decision is financial.
The Institute for Women’s Policy Research says nearly half of women working in the private sector have no paid sick days, and those women tend to be concentrated in the potentially germ-spreading fields of food preparation, child care and retail.
“It’s the workers who have the most face-to-face contact with the public, especially restaurants,” said Vicki Lovell, director of the institute’s employment programs and research. “It’s not the workers who are in back rooms by themselves.”
Some companies are proactive about keeping sick workers home. “We have a pretty clear policy about that,” said Dr. David Pratt, the Schenectady-based director of health services and medical operations for GE Energy. “We tell people if they have symptoms like runny noses or significant coughing, we don’t want them at work.” And do they listen?
Mostly they do, Pratt said, though he conceded that, even at a company where ill workers are told they’re forgiven for resting their stuffy heads, “there are die-hards who have to be shooed out of the office.”
