A 2 minute assessment to get a personalized mental health or alcohol recovery plan.
When people miss work due to alcohol use it hurts a business’s bottom line, but presenteeism is worse. Employees that show up to work hungover are much less productive, costing businesses 4x more.
Chances are you’re keeping track of when employees don’t show up to work. Absenteeism is easy to account for and the lost productivity is easy to measure.
But what you probably aren’t accounting for is a hidden cost that’s more substantial than being absent. Presenteeism is costlier, and it’s harder to spot.
Presenteeism: when employees are physically present but not fully functioning, whether due to illness, stress, or other impairments.
Harvard Business Review’s breakout 2004 study revealed that presenteeism costs U.S. companies over $150 billion a year, more than absenteeism does.
The problem is you often can't tell when, or how much, performance is being silently reduced while an employee is sitting at their desk.
One of the most common presenteeism impairments is hangovers, and to a lesser degree, intoxication on the job.
Tracking the numbers to determine the real impact of alcohol-related presenteeism
Once the issue of presenteeism became known, researchers dedicated numerous studies to examining the problem more closely. One issue researchers studied was how alcohol use influences presenteeism.
A University of Otago study tracking 800 employees and 227 employers found the average annual productivity loss per employee from alcohol is roughly $1,098, but the presenteeism portion (working while hungover or impaired) was four times costlier than absenteeism, working out to about five lost working days a year per employee.
Finding: The average annual cost of lost productivity per employee from alcohol was $1,097.71, $209.62 in absenteeism and $888.09 in presenteeism.
And this isn’t an isolated problem. A study out of the U.K. found something similar. Researchers estimated the combined annual cost of absenteeism and presenteeism from alcohol hangover and intoxication to be roughly £1.4 billion.
Just as concerning is the fact that 42 percent of the 3,400 employees in the study admitted to going to work hungover.
In the U.S., studies have found that absenteeism as well as presenteeism is twice as likely the day after an employee drinks, making alcohol a top contributor that is preventable.
How much productivity is impaired by alcohol-related presenteeism
In addition to putting a dollar figure to it, researchers have also quantified the productivity loss from alcohol-related presenteeism.
Hangovers lead to an 11 percent reduction in productivity while completing cognitive tasks the day after drinking.
A naturalistic study using a standardized cognitive-processing test found hangovers accounted for 11 percent of the variance in how long it took people to complete the task the following day.
The danger of employees who are less accurate on the job
There are also serious indirect costs beyond lost productivity. In occupations that affect the health and safety of others, presenteeism is a huge liability for businesses.
Nowhere is this more clear than the medical field. A 2013 study looked at what happened when surgeons were tested the morning after an evening of drinking. The time to complete surgical tasks wasn’t impacted, but the accuracy was negatively affected.
Luckily, the study was performed using simulators, but in real-world cases it can have devastating results.
Imagine what could happen if a warehouse employee using a forklift is on the job after a night of drinking. Or a facility manager makes a mistake setting up gate locks. Or an IT manager who’s working on a cybersecurity solution makes an error.
Impaired productivity and accuracy are a dangerous combination in any workplace.
The neurological triggers for presenteeism after drinking
We know presenteeism is an issue, but knowing what the problem is doesn’t tell you why it’s happening. In the case of alcohol use, we do have an understanding of the underlying mechanisms that are at work:
Less REM Sleep: Large-scale reviews have determined all it takes is two alcoholic beverages for REM sleep to be disturbed. The more you drink the worse the disruption gets.
That means an employee doesn’t even need to be a heavy drinker or hungover for presenteeism to happen. REM sleep is when the brain decompresses from emotional stress, consolidates memories, and processes information.
Impairing those processes leads to less creativity, worse memory, and mental fatigue.
Reduced Executive Function: Being able to switch back and forth between tasks is crucial for most employees. Doing so efficiently requires executive function, and it’s markedly reduced by alcohol use.
When people are hungover, they make significantly more errors in task-switching, in both 1-back and 2-back working memory tasks and in goal-maintenance tests.
That means switching between tasks, holding information in working memory, and staying on-goal are all more difficult.
What employers can do to reduce presenteeism from alcohol
As corporate leaders, we need to take action to minimize alcohol-related presenteeism the best we can. That starts with the company culture, but there’s more that you can do directly when it seems like alcohol-related presenteeism is a problem.
Brief intervention is usually all that’s needed to correct the issue. There’s actual research to back this up.
A study on employer-based interventions found at-risk employees who received a single brief-intervention session in addition to usual care showed improved on-the-job productivity, with an estimated cost savings of $1,200 per employee compared to standard care alone.
When the intervention occurs, it’s important to ask the employee what type of support they feel would be the most beneficial. For some, it’s managing alcohol cravings.
For others, it could be related to stress management so they aren’t self-medicating with alcohol. Understanding what prompts alcohol use is key to reducing it.
Today, there are a variety of treatment modalities that can be used on their own or in combination.
Pairing personalized treatment with support will go a long way in reducing presenteeism, and more importantly, helping employees live healthier, more productive lives.
If you want support drinking less or quitting, Choose Your Horizon can help. Start with the Alcohol Use Assessment. It takes just a few minutes and it is completely confidential.
