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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship of stressful life events and health related events with sickness absenteeism and presenteeism (attending work while ill or injured).

A web‐based survey was conducted within a public service organization which had just undergone a significant downsizing, where the workforce was reduced by over 30 per cent.

The findings indicated that stressful life events were significantly associated with both presenteeism and absenteeism, to the same degree.

These results extend previous research in suggesting that employees are substituting presenteeism for absenteeism. However, different health risks (chronic conditions vs needing counselling support) were more likely to predict absenteeism than presenteeism.

By supporting a substitution hypothesis, the present study suggests that both presenteeism and absenteeism are important measures of employee health and organizational productivity.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the results from two public sector organizations to test a model of the organizational antecedents and health consequences of sickness presenteeism (SP) in the workplace.

The study reports on two surveys of public employees, one including 237 respondents and another of 391 employees. The combined sample allowed for the testing of a model of organizational antecedents and the health consequences of SP.

The results supported the model, indicating that increased leader support and goal clarity decrease SP indirectly through increased trust. Decreasing presenteeism is associated with decreased sickness absence and better health.

The key practical application is in encouraging managers and scholars to recognize that the costs of presenteeism are as higher or higher than the costs of absenteeism.

The social implications are clear in helping us recognize that when people come to work sick, they are not productive and are endangering the productivity of others.

This is the first time that research had defined and operationalized a causal model linking antecedents such as leader-member relations, goal clarity and trust with SP and absenteeism.

The purpose of this paper is to compare sickness presence (SP) and sickness absence (SA) regarding the strength of their relationship to health/ill‐health. In a previous Canadian study a stronger association between SP and health/ill‐health than between SA and health/ill‐health was shown.

Five Swedish data sets from the years 1992 to 2005 provided the study populations, including both representative samples and specific occupational groups (n=425‐3,622). Univariate correlations and multiple logistic regression analyses were performed. The data sets contained questions on SP and SA as well as on various health complaints and, in some cases, self‐rated health (SRH).

The general trend was that correlations and odds ratios increased regularly for both SP and SA, with SP showing the highest values. In one data set, SRH was predicted by a combination of the two measures, with an explained variance of 25 percent. Stratified analyses showed that the more irreplaceable an individual is at work, the larger is the difference in correlation size between SP and SA with regard to SRH. SP also showed an accentuated and stronger association with SRH than SA among individuals reporting poor economic circumstances.

The results support the notion that SA is an insufficient, and even misleading, measure of health status for certain groups in the labor market, which seem to have poorer health than the measure of SA would indicate.

A combined measure of sickness presence and absence may be worth considering as an indicator of both individual and organizational health status.

The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence on the role of tenure as a moderator of the effects of job insecurity (JI) and employability on turnover intentions and absenteeism and will demonstrate its importance in personnel research and theorization.

Data from a sample of client service representatives of a Peruvian call centre (n=268) were analysed. Tests of hypotheses targeted the intact group as a whole and divided into short (3–10 months), medium (11–14 months) and long job tenure groups (15–37 months).

Results of general linear models revealed that the effects of JI on turnover intention observed in the intact group were aligned with those seen within each of the tenure groups. However, this was not the case for the effects of JI on absenteeism or the effects of employability on turnover intention and absenteeism. A comparison of results of various regression models indicated that the effects of JI and employability on absenteeism differed in meaningful ways across the intact group and the tenure groups.

The evidence does not reveal whether the observed differences stem from dynamic personnel selection processes or whether they express different relationships between the variables at various stages of an employee’s trajectory in an organization.

Human resource managers at call centres will be stimulated to re-evaluate the costs and benefits of promoting tenure, and journal editors will have to consider requesting the inclusion of tenure as a variable in studies focussing on organizations with high turnover.

This study is the first to prove that the effects of JI and employability on turnover intention and absenteeism vary across job tenure levels. It also shows the importance of addressing tenure in personnel research and theorization.

En este artículo se desea proporcionar evidencia sobre el rol de la antigüedad como moderador de los efectos de la inseguridad en el trabajo y la empleabilidad sobre las intenciones de irse y el ausentismo y demostrar su importancia en la teorización e investigación sobre el personal.

Se analizó datos de una muestra de representantes de servicios al cliente de un centro de llamadas peruano (n=268). Las pruebas de hipótesis abordaron al grupo intacto como un todo y dividido en grupos de antigüedad corta (3–10 meses), media (11–14 meses) y larga (15–37 meses).

Los resultados de modelos lineales generales revelaron que los efectos de la inseguridad en el trabajo sobre la intención de irse observados en el grupo intacto estaban alineados con aquellos vistos dentro de cada grupo de antigüedad. Sin embargo, este no era el caso de los efectos de la inseguridad en el trabajo sobre el ausentismo o los efectos de la empleabilidad sobre la intención de irse y el ausentismo. Una comparación de los resultados de varios modelos de regresión indicaron que los efectos de la inseguridad en el trabajo y la empleabilidad sobre el ausentismo diferían de manera significativa entre el grupo intacto y los grupos de antigüedad.

La evidencia no indica si las diferencias observadas provienen de procesos dinámicos de selección del personal o si expresan relaciones diferentes entre las variables en diversos momentos de la trayectoria del empleado en la organización.

Los gerentes de recursos humanos en centros de llamadas serán estimulados a reevaluar los costos y beneficios de promover la antigüedad y los editores de revistas científicas tendrán que considerar pedir la inclusión de la antigüedad como una variable en los estudios enfocados en organizaciones con altas tasas de rotación de personal.

Este estudio es el primero en demostrar que los efectos de la inseguridad en el trabajo y la empleabilidad sobre las intenciones de irse y el ausentismo varían a través de niveles de antigüedad del personal. También muestran la importancia de abordar la antigüedad en la teorización e investigación sobre el personal.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how to transform one's perception of workplace stressors, moving beyond the idea of merely surviving or coping with stress to “thriving” within what is becoming a non‐negotiable level of stress in the workplace.

The researchers generated a working definition of work stress thriving based on current literature, then conducted a content analysis of qualitative interviews to develop an empirically‐grounded understanding of factors differentiating a stress transformation response from a coping response to workplace stressors.

The study revealed key characteristics of a stress transformation response to stress challenges in the work place: systemic cognitive appraisal, inclusive communication strategies, collaborative and sustainable problem solving, individual learning and growth, and organizational positive impacts.

As a pilot study, limitations to the research include a relatively small sample size and only one type of work environment. More empirical work is needed to test the model, develop and validate measures of stress transformation.

Findings provide the foundation for further empirical research into stress transformation, and will potentially lead to the development of measures, training interventions, organizational structures, and work processes to enhance stress thriving within organizations.

The findings provide preliminary insights into tools for both organizational leaders and employees to respond more sustainably to increasingly stressful, fast paced, and complex work environments.

The study provides an original conceptual perspective on the concept of stress management, calling for a paradigm shift that views stress as desirable and conducive to optimal performance.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the relationships between high-performance work systems (HPWSs) and four employee outcomes – job satisfaction, employee engagement, presenteeism and well-being – in Indian call centres.

A path model is developed to investigate the direct and mediation effects between the assessed variables. The study utilised a survey of 250 call centre employees working in five business process management firms based in India.

The findings indicate that HPWSs have a positive relationship with job satisfaction, engagement and well-being. Job satisfaction also had a positive relationship with engagement and presenteeism, and engagement was positively related to presenteeism and well-being. However, there was no significant direct effect of HPWS on presenteeism. Mediation analysis showed that HPWS has an indirect effect on well-being via engagement and also via job satisfaction and engagement combined.

HPWS significantly increases job satisfaction and employee engagement and indirectly influences employee well-being via these outcomes. However, job satisfaction and employee engagement was also found to increase presenteeism, which, in turn, can reduce employee well-being. These findings contribute to the HPWS theory and the literature on employee well-being, and have implications for HR personnel and call centre management.

Given the well-established challenges with employee retention in Indian call centre environments, one solution may be the adoption of a more strategic approach to HRM using HPWS. Such an approach may enhance employees’ perceptions that HPWS practices would have a positive influence on job satisfaction, employee engagement and employee well-being.

Building on prior studies on the role of health-related and job-related issues in affecting presenteeism, the present study tested a mediation model of the relationship between job demands and presenteeism by exploring the mediation effect of menopausal symptoms.

Data were collected through a self-report questionnaire involving social service menopausal employees (N = 204) from a public municipal organization. The survey was cross-sectional and non-randomized.

Results revealed that job demands, namely emotional, cognitive and physical demands, were significantly and positively associated with presenteeism. Furthermore, mediation analysis evidenced that physical job demands were also associated with higher levels of menopausal physical symptom bothersomeness, which in turn serves as a condition to increase the act of presenteeism.

The findings of this study widen the perspective on presenteeism research by evidencing the role of an overlooked health-related factor in relation to the act of presenteeism, that is the menopausal transition. Insights for the development of targeted preventive measures of the act of presenteeism and menopausal symptom management in the workplace may also be derived from these results.

This study aims to explore how coping strategies (CS) mediate the relationship between job insecurity (JI) and subjective well-being (SWB) leading to presenteeism among millennials. This study has been tested based on the conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll, 2001) and the transactional theory of stress and coping (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984). In India, employees in the information technology (IT) and business process management sectors have been facing increased job insecurity over the last couple of years. The advent of technology has increased job insecurity among millennials, specifically in the IT sector. The Indian IT and information technology–enabled service (ITES) sector witnessed mass retrenchments by companies in 2016–2017. Instead of reskilling, the companies decided to lay off their employees. During the pandemic, the IT and ITES industries witnessed a massive culture shift in terms of technology and work engagement. Postpandemic, the recession is looming large on these industries. In 2022, tech layoffs have witnessed 135,000 employees impacted globally and many may lose their job in the coming year. This study chose Indian millennials because they form a large part of the Indian workforce, especially in the IT and ITES sector.

In this study, cross-sectional design is used where different individuals are part of the study at the same point in time. A sequential mixed method of research is adopted for this study, owing to the kind of research questions and the requirement to include critical realism. A qualitative study was carried out post the quantitative study, to corroborate the results from the quantitative study. Quantitative methodologies address questions about causality, generalizability or magnitude of outcome, whereas qualitative research methodologies explore why or how a phenomenon occurs, describe the nature of an individual’s experience during the study relevant to the context and/or develop a theory (Fetters et al., 2013). Because the study is about the millennial workforce in IT and the ITES sectors, the sample population comprised employees in Delhi and the national capital region (NCR) of Delhi in northern India. Out of a total of 374 ITES companies listed in the national association of software and service companies (2018), 103 are based out of Delhi/NCR; hence, companies from Delhi/NCR were chosen for the study. The other reason for opting for companies based in Delhi/NCR was that many millennials from second- and third-tier cities also are employed in these companies bringing in varied cultural perspectives. This study included 588 employees working in ITES organizations based in the National Capital Region of India. Mediation analysis for statistical verification was carried out with regression-based analysis in SPSS macro process (version 4).

The impact of job insecurity on the positive and negative affects of the subjective well-being of millennials was found to be substantial. Coping strategies moderated the relationship and it was seen that both engaged and disengaged strategies of coping had an impact on the positive affect of subjective well-being but did not have any impact on the negative affect of subjective well-being. The positive affect of subjective well-being was negatively related to presenteeism, and the negative affect of subjective well-being was positively related to presenteeism.

This study is carried out only in the ITES industry and on millennials. With the advent of technology, other industries are going through challenges concerning layoffs even though the severity of the same might be less. In times to come, for strategizing employee engagement, it is necessary to understand how the workforce copes with various work-related stress factors. The positive affects and negative affects of well-being and responses have been studied from an employee perspective only. Further research should be conducted to explore responses from both employers and employees to establish presenteeism and the antecedents of presenteeism in conjunction with positive and negative affects of well-being. There is further scope to study the impact of job insecurity on adaptive presenteeism in older generations and various industries given the current job scenario and talent-reskilling issues.

This study brings forth original insights into the impact of constant job threats on millennials employed in the IT and/or IT service sectors. The key findings contribute to literature knowledge and help managers recognize the unfavorable consequences of continuous job threats on the well-being of employees. There is an immediate need for managers to recognize the problem and devise various policies and communication strategies to enable millennial employees to cope with the constant changes in the organization, owing to various technological, political and environmental factors. Organizations should be mindful of this impact, which can subsequently have serious consequences on the productivity of the employees, resulting in decreased overall performance and health of the organization.

This study of job insecurity as a job stressor, triggering coping strategies in Indian millennials working in the ITES and IT industry, presents original insights. This study explores and presents how the impact of job insecurity may increase presenteeism as a result of coping. This study brings value to practitioners and this study may help organizations improve the overall well-being of their employees, thus improving productivity. On the contrary, it also opens opportunities for exploring the impact of job insecurity as a challenge stressor.