For a long time, a French problem has been identified: presenteeism at work. Neither good for productivity nor good for the quality of life at work, no better for the articulation of time or diversity (social, gender, geographical, etc.), this unfortunate obligation to " show up at work" seems to want to resist everything. Including weeks of confinement that have physically distanced us from the workplace...
But this did not prevent them from still believing that their commitment is measured in terms of their time availability (and why not at the extremes of the early morning or late evening, with children in the field or preparing the pot)! But where does this presentee culture come from? Why is it so difficult to get rid of it? What are the possible ways for a big change in mindset on engagement at work ?
What it means to be " present " at work
Space-time of work, a duty and rights
For a long time, people worked where they lived (farm, mine, factory, etc.) and with no other conception of working time than that which was strictly necessary to reconstitute one's strength (sleep, food, etc.) in order to be able to get back to work afterwards.
The first regulations on working time date back to the middle of the nineteenth century, taking the form of prohibitions on employers imposing long days on children, then on women... And finally, in 1919, all workers who could not be asked to work more than 8 hours a day.
Several laws on working time followed, concerning the reduction of weekly hours, paid holidays or the supervision of breaks. Bitterly negotiated social progress... But also a legal-legal approach that endorses the idea of making the individual's time available to the employer. Availability is due, in return for a certain number of social rights. On a cultural level, this implies that you " point " if not to the badge reader, at least the tip of your nose to let people know that you are at work. It doesn't matter if you work there or not !
The " command & control " managerial model
This approach to the value of work by the time spent on it in the place that is planned for it has strongly influenced the managerial culture: the role of the team leader is to check that everyone is in their position, before taking an interest in the way he/she does his/her job.
Of course, the tertiarization of the economy and the massification of staff with " managerial " status have led to a certain number of changes : we have become aware that the essential thing is not to be there (possibly with one's head elsewhere) but to provide proof of one's results. If in the end, the job is done, then what does it matter if you do it from home, at the time of your choice? Common sense even for all professions that do not require a presence in the workplace, especially at a time when digital tools are becoming more widespread.
But the debates of the last fifteen years on teleworking reveal that, despite a rational argument for remote work (saving on real estate costs, reducing travel times, increasing productivity), the development of this work is coming up against the inertia of a " command and control " managerial culture.
Local management is worried about a slackening of commitment, a disorganization of processes, or even the temptation to take the soft color of some employees if they do not come " to work "... At the same time, some of the organizations representing employees are wary of this transformation of the organization of work, which shifts the burden of professional premises, telephony, Internet connection, etc., to the individual, not to mention the psychosocial risks associated with the isolation of people.
Who is not present is absent ?
But by the way, is France culturally a more impregnable presentist bastion than any other ?
The Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development's annual report on health and wellbeing at work revealed in 2019 that our country is Europe's " champion " when it comes to " going to work " at all costs. 83% of French employees said they had already practiced or observed presenteeism, understood here as the fact of going to work without really working, either because of a lack of motivation or because of a lack of full possession of one's abilities due to one's personal condition (62% said they went to the workplace, even when they are sick — the survey was conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic).
Other studies show the reluctance of employees to use the work flexibility measures or the life-sharing measures put in place by their company for fear of losing the trust of their manager, of not being there when decisions that affect them could be taken, missing out on key information to accomplish their mission or depriving themselves of opportunities to seize. The adage " absentees are always wrong " seems to be deeply rooted in our minds. Thus, most of us can deplore presenteeism while being just as many of us practice it assiduously !
The moral of presenteeism
Guilt as the most severe of foremen
Presenteeism reaches the heights of contradiction when it appears even more resistant at a distance : teleworking or automatically confined by a health crisis, we are preoccupied with showing ourselves as much as possible at work, by multiplying emails, phone calls, video calls, sending deliverables at any time of the day or night. Proof of this is, if it were still necessary to bring any, that presenteeism is not a matter of the workplace or tools, but truly of culture. A culture permeated by an immense feeling of guilt.
Researchers Bénédicte Berthe and Marc Dumas studied presenteeism in the light of emotional levers among healthcare staff: well before the fear of the boss or the weight of processes, what motivates presenteeism is the latent feeling of never doing enough, of not being up to the task and thus the fear of betraying one's vocation. To understand one's job as a mission would encourage presentist reflexes, to the point of total irrationality consisting, for example, in caregivers coming to work while sick, at the risk of practicing badly, aggravating one's own condition and/or transmitting one's affection to those one wants to help.
An economy of the taboo of laziness ?
But the inability of individuals to free themselves from the feeling of guilt or their reluctance to take a step back from what they consider to be their vocation is not enough to explain presenteeism.
While many high-profile studies highlight the economic and social cost of presenteeism, and in the shadow of it, burnout syndromes, we hear less about the burnout economy: Georges Vigarello's recent History of Fatigue already shows us how it has become more socially valid to be overworked than rested ; But others go further, assuming the idea that the categorical prohibition of being " lazy ", perfectly integrated by the vast majority and maintained by an over-responsibility of the individual as to his or her destiny, provides the economy with a workforce that is more servile than ever.
Thus, the economist Thomas Coutrot, head of the " working conditions and health " department at DARES, invites in various books and contributions to " really liberate work ", beyond the transformation of organizational modes and managerial practices, to allow everyone to flourish in " doing " and " contributing ". This implies, to begin with, taking the work out of fears : fear of being judged, fear of losing one's job, fear of being stigmatized if one loses one's job, fear of being accused (or of accusing oneself) of laziness when one does not have the courage, the strength, the desire, the health to work and the necessary conditions to work well.
Overcoming presenteeism
What the individual can do
It's not easy to get out of presenteeism : sometimes it even feels like swimming against the tide in rough seas ! However, it is possible to implement a number of actions to limit the deleterious effects:
- Sanctuarize one's work moments and one's time reserved for private life, because it is the porosity of the two that very often leads to the over-soliciting and exhausting spiral of presenteeism.
- Take time each evening to take stock of what you have accomplished during the day, so that you can start to free yourself from the feeling of not doing enough and all the guilt that it brings.
- Negotiate with his/her manager a clear framework of expectations in terms of required attendance. That he/she knows when you are available in person or via communication tools so that it is no longer considered by default that you are permanently available.
What management can do
Management also has a card to play in reducing presenteeism :
- Exemplary life balance is the very first key. An employee will never feel fully authorized to leave work or close his or her computer remotely if his or her superiors are permanently on deck !
- The legibility of the management's expectations in terms of results but also methods and means is essential : the employee needs to identify precisely the part of the job that he/she can accomplish alone and that which requires interaction with the group (and when these interactions require everyone to be together at the same time or when they may be out of sync).
- Leading sharing times requiring the presence of everyone is a major role of the manager : to ensure that these times of presence are not those of presenteeism, it is essential not to let meetings become opportunities for everyone to obtain a sense of existence and recognition... Just as these meetings should not be the place for the dissemination of informal information unrelated to the project under discussion... Nor that of the more or less slyly brought about settling of scores. To make face-to-face and synchronous working times truly effective moments where being together represents a real added value, it is therefore necessary to offer other space-times for everything related to the needs of individuals and problems between people : meetings dedicated to feedback, processes for managing tensions and conflicts, moments of conviviality clearly presented as levers of cohesion, formalized information time on the changes in the organization and the opportunities they can offer.
What the organization can do
We must also act at the organizational level to install a culture of mobilization of all disconnected from the immobilization of everyone !
To do this, the company can start by changing the way it looks at " absences ". Traditionally perceived as " lack of call ", absences are associated with disability (illness, pregnancy, personal obligations to be met, etc.) or idleness (rest time, leave, etc.). A restrictive vision (because you can of course work without showing yourself!) but also moralizing in which the absentee is always a little wrong...
Or at least, doesn't have a sense of priorities that would put work at the top of the agenda ! A guilt (and anxiety) factory for pregnant women, young parents, sick people and their caregivers, but also any of us who hardly dares to " disconnect " on weekends and during the holidays, worries about how each other will look if he or she has to leave work early for x or y reason...
A first step would be taken if we could move away from a vision of absence as a moral failure, supposed to indicate the level of courage, determination, and commitment of individuals to finally make it enter into a more rational perspective, by considering, for example, that people's need to be absent calls for ad hoc (and not costly in terms of career) adjustments to the pace of some people and transformations of work processes to that these people remain on board even when it is not possible for them to ensure a continuous presence.
The organization also has the possibility of sanctioning presenteeism. Some methods such as " tracking " to assess productivity seem as old-fashioned as they are unsuited to the need for meaning, the appetite for autonomy and the culture of well-being at work. Others, such as the systematic inclusion in evaluation interviews of an exchange on the real needs of face-to-face training, make it possible to move the subject forward more flexibly.
But to really move the lines, it seems essential to make " working time" an object of collective conversation within the company and that this conversation goes beyond the sole questions of flex-work modalities or remote work evaluation systems to really get down to business : how to rethink the value of work Out of the deliberately binary schemes that refer back to back to means and results, time spent and profitability, resources implemented and profit generated...
For example, it is important to value the contribution of extra-professional experience (the same one that develops in moments of " absence " from work), to better measure negative externalities (here, the cost of presenteeism in the short, medium, long term on stress, commitment, employer attractiveness, etc.) as well as positive externalities (here, for example, the increased acuity of people who do not have their head in the handlebars and testify to a better distance from situations...) and to build inclusive environments where everyone can express their uniqueness without having to pay the price individually and while contributing fully to the collective, through a reasonable code of requirements for participation in timeshares.
