Can organizational adjustment for presenteeism be a good occupational health intervention?

Introduction
Presenteeism is defined as attending work when ill and involves both positive and negative factors. Positive factors are organizational adjustment in the form of good organizational solutions given the impairment of the employee compared to negative factors that arouse attendance which force people into work despite their health condition.

Methods
We investigated factors behind presenteeism (logistic regression) in a company (N=475). The aim of the study was to find what psychosocial factors differentiate between three groups of employees; absentees - who had reported themselves sick last year, employees that during the same period had attended work with health problems (presentees), but had no absenteeism, and employees with neither absent days nor reporting presenteeism (healthy workers).

Results
The results showed that two factors separated the presentees from the two other groups. The first one was that a significant number of them perceived that their subjective health were poor. This means that the absentees actually thought their health were better. The other factor that was deviating for the presentees was that they experienced higher censure pressure (they expected more negative attention from superiors or colleagues if they were going to be absent). Two more factors differentiated between the presentees and one of the other groups. Compared to the healthy workers a significant higher number of the presentees were working 3/5-shifts. Compared to the absentees they perceived more attendance pressure in the form of higher work morale.

Discussion
The only organizational adjustment found in this company was related to the shift arrangement and can be understood as a positive intervention. Employees reporting neither absenteeism nor presenteeism were to a larger extent on permanent day shift. The higher pressure the presentees experienced together with their poorer subjective health may represent a possible problem in the long run for early retirements or absenteeism.