You may have heard of absenteeism and perhaps even presenteeism, but the newest term on the block is leaveism. What is leaveism?
It is defined by Dr Ian Hesketh and Professor Cary Cooper (2014) as:
(1) employees utilising allocated time off such as annual leave entitlements, flexi hours banked, re-rostered rest days and so on, to take time off when they are in fact unwell;
(2) employees taking work home that cannot be completed in normal working hours;
(3) employees working while on leave or holiday to catch up.
Hesketh and Cooper point out that “to rely solely on traditional sickness absence as being the indicator for performance management does not present a full and an accurate picture of the overall well-being of the workforce.” Mind & Mission believe that absence should never be an indicator for performance (but that’s for another article).
The research showed that workload is by far the main cause of stress at work resulting in the working practices described above. In other words, workloads are so high that employees cannot complete their work in the time contracted by their employers.
The days of holidays being holidays are very much muddied now, with many employees being effectively ‘on-call’ throughout holiday periods. How is this good for our mental health? Obviously it’s not.
What this means is that employers must start to look beyond pure absence rates to understand what is driving employee behaviour, health and wellbeing. In fact they need to look inwards at outdated HR policies which drive these behaviours and make changes that represent their own culture and values.
