Presenteeism - Relationship With Absenteeism

Relationship With Absenteeism

In some cases, scholars relate presenteeism to absenteeism, which is the tendency not to show up for scheduled work. Furthermore, Johns described the notion that some believe that factors that reduce absenteeism will increase presenteeism. He stated, however, that this is plausible but not always the case because he pointed out that Aronsson et al. found high rates of presenteeism in industries where absenteeism was also high.

Additionally, research that examines absenteeism is at times used to draw conclusions about presenteeism. For example, Virtanen, Kivimaki, Elovainio, Vahtera, and Ferrie found that employees exhibited much higher rates of absenteeism once they became permanent workers. The authors thought that this increase could have been due to decreases in the preexisting levels of presenteeism. However, they did not directly measure presenteeism. Commenting on such research behavior, Johns said in his review of the literature that researchers should not infer presenteeism from absenteeism data. Instead, the author noted that both constructs should be measured at the same time.