Do Temporary Workers More Often Decide to Work While Sick? Evidence for the Link between Employment Contract and Presenteeism in Europe

Abstract

European employees are increasingly likely to work in cases of illness (sickness presenteeism, SP). Past studies found inconsistent evidence for the assumption that temporary workers decide to avoid taking sick leave due to job insecurity. A new measure to identify decision-based determinants of SP is presenteeism propensity (PP), which is the number of days worked while ill in relation to the sum of days worked while ill and days taken sickness absence. We investigated the link between employment contract and PP using cross-sectional data from 20,240 employees participating in the 2015 European Working Conditions Survey. Workers were grouped by type and duration of employment contract. The link between contract and PP was estimated using a multilevel Poisson model adjusted for socio-demographical, occupational and health-related covariates. We found that European employees worked 39% of the days they were ill. In contrast to previous studies, temporary workers were significantly more likely to decide for presenteeism than permanent workers were, especially when the contract was limited to less than 1 year. Controlling for perceived job insecurity did just marginally attenuate this association. Presenteeism was also more common among young and middle-aged workers; however, we did not find a significant interaction between contract and age affecting presenteeism. In conclusion, the employment contract is an important determinant of presenteeism. Our results give reason to believe that temporary workers show increased attendance behavior independent of job insecurity, because they are less likely to have access to social protection in case of illness.

Keywords: employment contract; job insecurity; presenteeism propensity; sickness presence; sickness presenteeism; temporary work; young workers.

Figure A1

Distribution of health events and presenteeism propensity in the EWCS 2015.

Figure 1

Means of presenteeism propensity in 33 European countries (2015) adjusted for sex, age, job tenure, working hours, occupation and working sector.

Figure 2

Predicted presenteeism propensity by employment contract in different age groups. Propensities adjusted for country, sex, job tenure, working hours, income, occupation, working sector, company size and number of health events.