MZMORALE ZEROthe antithesis of employee engagement
DIRECTIVE 034 / WORTH

SHOW UP SICK

Absence is visible. Reduced capacity while present is more discreet.

Praise reliability, continuity and commitment strongly enough that employees understand the reputational cost of staying home when ill. Keep sick-leave policy formally available. Allow culture, workload and staffing to explain when using it is professionally inconvenient.

Primary: WORTHFAIRNESSCONTROL
RATIONALE
Presence is easy to count and prevents short-term staffing gaps from appearing on management dashboards.
SUCCESS INDICATOR
Employees remain at work while ill, converting an absence problem into a productivity and recovery problem that is harder to see.
COMMON FAILURE
Designing attendance norms and staffing practices so employees can recover when sick without disproportionate workload, income or reputational penalties.
STATUS
Canonical / approved

Reconstructed Handbook series.

THE UNFORTUNATE PART

Unfortunately, the research…

Claim

Presenteeism—working while ill—is associated with a range of health, work and contextual factors and cannot be understood simply as evidence of commitment or productivity.

Evidence

A meta-analysis covering 109 samples and more than 175,000 participants identified health, job demands, job resources and personal factors among the correlates of working while ill.

Strength: Strong

Sources

The Directive is satire. The research summary is not. Evidence is stated separately and qualified to the underlying literature rather than treated as proof of the joke.

PREVIOUS

BE PROFESSIONAL

NEXT

REMOVE THEM FROM THE LOOP