Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards | NY Times Mag. art .on Presenteeism-Heather you might want to check it out

For those of you who do not get the NY Times I found this interesting mini article in this Sunday's(Dec.12) Magazine section on page 88 by Jason Zengerle about Presenteeism. The last paragraph has to do with IBS.

For some bosses, there's no greater satisfaction than hearing the coughs and sniffles of their workers. Those sickly sounds say something good about their employees: namely, that they're hard-working and dedicated enough to show up at the office even when they're under the weather. Employees who come to work sick, the thinking goes, are a sign of a healthy company.

But that thinking may soon change, thanks to a growing body of research on a phenomenon called presenteeism -- the problem of workers being on the job but, because of illness, not operating at top form. According to some health and management experts, presenteeism is a bigger and more costly problem than absenteeism.

In the April issue of The Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, a team of researchers analyzed information from a medical database of 375,000 employees in the United States as well as five productivity surveys on 10 common health conditions, like hypertension and diabetes. The researchers, primarily from the Institute for Health and Productivity Studies at Cornell University and the health-information company Medstat, found that as much as 60 percent of the total cost of worker illness stems from ''on-the-job productivity losses'' -- exceeding what companies spend on medical and disability benefits and sick days. The biggest productivity drains, according to the study, are relatively benign ailments like headaches, allergies and arthritis. Another recent study, conducted by Walter Stewart, a health researcher, calculated that presenteeism costs American businesses more than $150 billion per year in decreased productivity.

A handful of companies have started to wise up. The bank Comerica, for instance, sponsored an in-house health study that determined that at least 10 percent of its workforce of 10,919 suffered from irritable bowel syndrome and that the condition reduced on-the-job productivity by approximately 20 percent. ''People show up for work, but with the pain -- not to mention frequent trips to the bathroom -- they're just not very productive,'' a Comerica vice president said in an article in the October issue of Harvard Business Review. In response, Comerica sponsored a series of hourlong sessions with a gastroenterologist for its employees. Presenteeism-related declines in productivity, the article concluded, ''can be more than offset by relatively small investments in screening, treatment and education.'' And that's music to any boss's ears -- even more than the sound of coughs and sniffles.

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IBS-D

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