Edited by Alfred Anate Mayaki, Tuesday, 21 Nov 2023, 18:59
Dr. Andrew Bryce, the author and research
academic from the University of Sheffield - who I mentioned in a previous OU
Blog post, sent me this email yesterday:
"Indeed shirking and presenteeism are two
sides of the same coin. As my colleague Sarah Brown shows in her paper, the
problem is that true health is not observed by the employer so it is difficult
to know whether a worker is shirking or genuinely too ill to work. Likewise,
they don't know whether the staff who do attend work are well enough to do the
work effectively. This may be even more difficult when staff habitually work
remotely. So the challenge to HR practitioners is to have incentives in place
to encourage sick workers to stay at home and workers in good health to come
in.
I can't say much in answer to your specific
question as the policies and practices adopted by firms have not been the focus
of my research. You may wish to look at another paper I have recently published
with the same co-authors, looking at sickness absence. In the literature
review, we highlight a number of studies that look at the effectiveness of
different approaches and working conditions for reducing sickness absence. I
hope this will help to guide your further reading on this subject."
Lots of ways to look at
this...
-------
This post was written by
Alfred Anate Mayaki, a student on the MSc in HRM, and was inspired by the work
of Andrew M. Bryce, Jennifer Roberts, and Mark L. Bryan (2021) in a European
Journal of Health Economics article entitled, “The effects of long-term
health conditions on sickness absence in the UK"
A Message from Dr. Andrew Bryce
Dr. Andrew Bryce, the author and research academic from the University of Sheffield - who I mentioned in a previous OU Blog post, sent me this email yesterday:
"Indeed shirking and presenteeism are two sides of the same coin. As my colleague Sarah Brown shows in her paper, the problem is that true health is not observed by the employer so it is difficult to know whether a worker is shirking or genuinely too ill to work. Likewise, they don't know whether the staff who do attend work are well enough to do the work effectively. This may be even more difficult when staff habitually work remotely. So the challenge to HR practitioners is to have incentives in place to encourage sick workers to stay at home and workers in good health to come in.
I can't say much in answer to your specific question as the policies and practices adopted by firms have not been the focus of my research. You may wish to look at another paper I have recently published with the same co-authors, looking at sickness absence. In the literature review, we highlight a number of studies that look at the effectiveness of different approaches and working conditions for reducing sickness absence. I hope this will help to guide your further reading on this subject."
Lots of ways to look at this...
-------
This post was written by Alfred Anate Mayaki, a student on the MSc in HRM, and was inspired by the work of Andrew M. Bryce, Jennifer Roberts, and Mark L. Bryan (2021) in a European Journal of Health Economics article entitled, “The effects of long-term health conditions on sickness absence in the UK"