Can We End the Era of Presenteeism?
A toxic, ridiculous mentality is being dismantled one Zoom call at a time — or is it being reconstructed?
With the sunlight creeping into the bathroom through the glass, he sat on the toilet, hair unkempt and teeth unbrushed. A regular, usual routine that lasts no more than 15 minutes before getting ready for work is now involuntarily extended as he stares intently at his phone screen.
His thumb scrolls as his eyes darts left to right. There were hashtags, messages directed to him, and some long paragraphs across each channel that he had to look through. The continuous back and forth extended his routine by another 15 minutes as he replies to each message, before getting to his desk.
Past lunchtime, and he’s back to the bathroom. While he rinses his face, his phone vibrates. He deliberately left his screen unlocked; that way, his little green dot on his avatar icon won’t turn yellow. He’s “present”, and no one can say he isn’t despite nobody knowing where he is.
Today’s era of remote work is heralded as a dismantler of presenteeism. An opposite of absenteeism, presenteeism is about employees coming to work while they are not able to perform optimally (usually, it’s them being sick). It is a phenomenon that has existed for a long time: a…
