The large scale costs of absenteeism and presenteeism

Measuring the costs of absenteeism and presenteeism is a challenging task. In fact, there’s no magic formula to do so. As far as absenteeism goes, many people have tried to simplify the process by adding together the wages and administrative expenses associated with the behavior. Along those lines, several companies and experts use the ‘absence rate’ as the ideal variable to identify and measure absenteeism. While this approach has been useful, it is also incomplete, as it doesn’t take into consideration important indirect costs that often are directly connected to presenteeism. In a recent article published by The Benefits Guide, journalist and marketing expert Stephanie Dwilson mentions some of these costs: