Presenteeism, Absenteeism, and Thai Public Sector

Abstract

Currently, both the public and private sectors are expecting their workers to work at full performance with maximum hours to gain efficiency and cover all costs. However, the lacking awareness of the fact that while working, the workers may face the physical problems or get sick, so they cannot work with the full performance as the organizations have expected. Therefore, which one is better between letting the workers come to work while they are sick – presenteeism; or allowing them to take a habitual absence from work – absenteeism; until they are full recovered?

Many studies on these issues and academic opinions pointed out in the same direction that presenteeism causes the loss of productivity to organizations more than absenteeism. However, nowadays, the Thai government still focuses on controlling the number of sick leave days of the officials more than giving the priority to. In the past, there was only a campaign for government officials to exercise that did not make any results.