Not
long before I joined the MSc in HRM, I was between program options. My
research into what would be my third degree had led me to HRM as a viable route
into a postdoctoral role. While considering my options with a skip in my step
and a huge bout of consummate optimism, I without hesitation applied to graduate
admissions at The London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) for
what was meant to be a 1+3 (MRes + PhD in Employee Relations and Human Resources)
- this was in late July by the way - this application ended up being for an MSc
in Economics and Management, mainly due to the fact that a hard deadline for
the 1+3 program had just elapsed. My only option was to apply for another
Uni at short notice or defer my interest until the next academic year.
University
application processes are strange things because you can't really apply
everywhere, you have enough time and energy to engage in a limited number of applications.
Having realised that I had spent the best part of £80 GBP - the set fee that
LSE charges for the privilege of tendering its application process, chased multiple
academic references for the best part of a month and produced a compelling
supporting statement for what turned out to be nothing whatsoever, I decided to channel my efforts towards this distance learning program
instead of LSE’s ERHR, maintaining all the prior graft I had accumulated for postdoctoral research.
Considering productivity and well-being in the literature
Whilst
in a sort of quasi-transition between these two programs, I uncovered an interesting article by the team at MorganAsh. Now, I don’t
wish to be too complimentary to the entire paper, but in the article, the
company through its Director, Andrew Gething, speaks eloquently about Employee
Assistance Programs (EAPs) and absenteeism in the context of Financial Services.
Whilst conducting research on this article, I came across and shared something that
popped up in my academic inbox about a term called ‘presenteeism’ a few days
ago courtesy of People Management magazine.
To
explain, I recently wrote an article on microeconomic wage bargaining which
uncovered the effect of shirking on wages. Presenteeism is
essentially an extension of the shirking principle. The Brown and Sessions model is
interesting because it is cited by Andrew Bryce in his paper which is perhaps
the second most authoritative in the literature. Having retweeted Dr. Bryce’s post
on X about his paper, which was subsequently the subject of a few exchanges between
ourselves via e-mail, it was important for me to draw inferences from this duality
to bring closure to my convictions. I, for one, believe that HR professionals must
resolve the landscape of factors influencing dysfunctional presenteeism in
practice either through soft or hard means. More on this later.
Life
is a funny ol’ thing. It would almost certainly have never crossed my mind that,
even with my rich vein of experience in HR, I would have stumbled
across such valuable a concept as presenteeism and leavism, so early on in my respective journey.
---
This
post was written by Alfred Anate Mayaki, a student on the MSc in HRM, and was
inspired by the work of Mark L. Bryan, Jennifer Roberts, and Andrew M. Bryce (2022)
in an article entitled, “Dysfunctional Presenteeism: Effects of physical and mental
health on work performance”.
