All present but work not accounted for

What do you call it when you’ve got a sick, fatigued or down-right depressed worker sitting at their desk and staring into space?

In past years some managers may have called that lazy, but HR and health care experts have a different name for it: “presenteeism,” and it’s one of the biggest threats to workplace productivity and the bottom line.

According to the 2004 article “Presenteeism: At Work – But Out of It,” published in the Harvard Business Review, workers who are on the job but just taking up space cost companies an estimated $150 billion a year, far outstripping the other big productivity killer, absenteeism.

A more recent study, “Depression in the Working Population,” published this year by the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, reported that 70 percent of depression-related productivity loss can be attributed to presenteeism. The other 30 percent comes from absenteeism.

The ACOEM study puts the combined economic toll from absenteeism and presenteeism at $36 billion annually, much lower than the Harvard Business Review figures, but both reports highlight that out-of-whack workers are a major problem.

But what really makes presenteeism so threatening is how hard it is to spot. A big part of the problem is that it’s not the same as just sitting around wasting time. Malingerers and layabouts are as much a feature of the workplace as paper cuts – catching someone goofing off on the Internet isn’t the same as someone who’s so stressed out they can’t function, or whose heartburn or allergies are driving them to distraction.

Now, amid tough economic times, employees are coming to work saddled with mountains of financial stress and presenteeism is increasingly a function of emotional distress. Savvy HR managers should recognize that an unhappy worker is often just a “present” worker, and experts say a mix of communication, mentoring and health care support are crucial to keeping employees happy enough to do their jobs.