UCS/Canadian Association of Labour Media: Sick? but still going to work? You’ll probably end up taking more sick days in the future than colleagues who stay at home when unwell, according to a Swedish study.
Researchers at the Karolinska Institute of Stockholm found that workers who go to work feeling sick—termed sickness presenteeism—have higher rates of future work absences due to illness.
Gunnar Bergstrom, who led the study, said these findings suggest that measures attempting to decrease work absences could inadvertently have the opposite effect and show that taking sick leave when appropriate benefited the workplace.
The study, published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, was based on research involving two groups of workers— about 3,750 public-sector workers who were mainly female, and 2,500 private-sector workers who were mainly male. In the first year of the study, 19 per cent of public sector workers and 13 per cent of private-sector workers had more than five sick-presenteeism days.
For these workers, the risk of having more than 30 days of absenteeism the following year was 40 to 50 per cent higher than for workers who had fewer days sick in the office.