Presenteeism has been called “working while unwell” and is meant to refer to the lack of productivity and costs to the employers, when employees show up to work at less than full steam. It represents disengagement for whatever reason–stress, marital strife, erratic child care, lack of sleep, issues with a supervisor–not just illness. There is a growing movement towards a more inclusive view of improving health and productivity that encompasses an individual’s overall well-being with an aim of improving the functioning of the whole individual at home, at work, and in the community.
The book cites our article, “The Well-Being Assessment for Productivity: A Well-Being Approach to Presenteeism,” authored by Evers and others at Pro-Change and Healthways as a seminal piece of research on the factors that lead to presenteeism. The article addresses measures of presenteeism that determine how aspects of physical and emotional health, work environment, and basic access to resources act as barriers to productivity. Those measures can provide a more informative evaluation of productivity loss than measures focusing only on illness, and can lead to targeted interventions to reduce presenteeism.
Evers states that “In this book, Gurunath Hari uses true life stories to present a powerful message that explains the dynamics with which employee well-being and presenteeism interact and provides compelling reasons and ways to institutionalize a holistic wellness approach for people to sustain excellence in work and life.”
The book will be available from Amazon and in Kindle at the end of February.