One of the biggest threats to all employers, and one of the least understood, is presenteeism.  Some studies⁽¹⁾ have estimated Presenteeism to be more than 7 times as costly to employers than absenteeism.  While it is easy to define absenteeism as an employee being at work or not, presenteeism is much more difficult to define and measure.  This is especially true among professionals and knowledge workers.

Just What Is Presenteeism?

   Presenteeism is defined as an employee being present but not being fully focused and productive because of personal health and life problem distractions.  The old saying of someone "being there in body only" sums up the concept of presenteeism. Presenteeism manifests itself in many ways, such as lack of focus, accidents and mistakes, interpersonal difficulties, poor work skills and production problems.

Presenteeism accounts for 61% of an employees total lost productivity and medical costs - Cornell University study, Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, April 2004.

   The Cornell University study highlighted in blue above researched 375,000 employees over a three year period. In addition to that exhaustive study, many others have uncovered an alarming set of statistics. Examples are:

• Presenteeism costs employers an estimated $2000/yr/employee (Cigna Behavioral Health, April 26, 2004)
• 42% of employees anticipate elder care issues over the next five years (Risk and Insurance, March, 2004)
• 37% of employees with current elder care issues have lost work time per week, a total of (11) hours/wk spent. (Risk and Insurance, March, 2004)
• 49% of employees lose productivity at a rate of 1 hour or more/day due to stress. (Business Legal Resources, April 24, 2003)

Preventing Presenteeism

   The most obvious solution to the presenteeism problem is to provide all employees with more assistance, i.e., supporting services.  In the case of group legal plans, a lot could be done over and above simply providing the name of an attorney, or even paying the attorney fee. One example that comes to mind almost immediately: Why should an employee spend company time waiting on "hold" while trying to get through to the attorney just to obtain a case status update?  That employee is obviously too stressed out to work.  Simply providing that employee with the knowledge that somebody else is doing that for him or her will take a tremendous load off their mind.  There is also has the unseen benefit of increasing employee loyalty by demonstrating to all employees that their employer really cares about their needs.

   Over the years Legal Access has developed a very effective solution to the problems outlined above. Our staff of highly trained Personal Assistance Specialists (PAS) use proven, documented techniques to help an employee step-by-step. This includes accurately assessing the personal legal specialty requirements of each employee and quickly locating the best attorney to meet those needs. The PAS can even make the phone call needed to set up a meeting and will follow-up on the status later. Referred to as the AttorneyMatch™ delivery model, this unique Legal Access option ensures every employee will have their own dedicated “help specialist” to get their legal problems attended to on a personalized basis, and ensures minimal “lost-work” time.

(1) The Employers Health Coalition of Tampa, FL - 1999

   All group legal plan advice and group legal evaluation
screens and HTML content is:
Copyright © Legal Access Plans, L.L.C.
Excel is a trademark of Microsoft Corp.