Presenteeism during public health crises: Examining why organisational sickness preventative practices work differently for men and women

Abstract

People often come to work sick – a prevalent behaviour even during public health crises. Integrating trait activation and social role theories, we examine how organisational sickness preventative practices affect workplace anxiety, approach and avoidance motivation for presenteeism, in turn, contributing to male–female differences in presenteeism. We conducted a time-separated study. The results (N = 86 working adults who completed all four waves of the data) supported our moderated mediation model in that organisational sickness preventative practices were beneficial for reducing avoidance motivation to engage in presenteeism for women, but less so for men. These practices were similarly beneficial for reducing workplace anxiety for women, which explained their lower presenteeism compared to men. We performed a cross-sectional replication using only employees who worked in the traditional office at Time 3 (N = 56) and obtained similar findings. Our results offer steps on how to manage presenteeism.