Remote and hybrid work have quietly rewritten what it means to show up sick, and the old definition of presenteeism no longer measures the problem accurately, according to new research from the University of Manchester published this week. Professor Sir Cary Cooper and co-authors from National Taiwan University and Soochow University argue that presenteeism research has stayed anchored to a pre-pandemic idea: an employee physically at their desk despite illness. That definition misses the much larger population of remote and hybrid staff logging on while unwell, at reduced capacity, from home.
The researchers propose a new three-dimensional model instead, sorting presenteeism by health type (physical or mental), work location (on-site or remote), and engagement level (full schedule or reduced hours and effort). Cross those three dimensions and eight distinct categories of presenteeism emerge, most of which standard sick-day tracking never captures because the employee never marked themselves absent.
For HR leaders, the gap matters because most attendance and wellbeing metrics still assume presenteeism is visible: someone coughing at their desk, someone who should have stayed home. A remote employee working a reduced, foggy day while sick registers as a normal working day in almost every system built to flag the problem. “Technology has given people much greater flexibility over where and when they work, but that flexibility can become a trap if employees feel they have to be available all the time,” Cooper said.
The original insight worth acting on is not that remote work causes presenteeism, it is that remote work made presenteeism invisible to the systems designed to catch it. Employers building hybrid support programs and those still adjusting policy after high-profile remote-work reversals like Uber’s should treat this as a reason to measure engagement and output quality, not just login activity, if they want an honest read on whether remote staff are actually well enough to be working.
Source: University of Manchester
