Presenteeism and Low Work Performance Among Fruit Farm Workers in Northeast Brazil

ABSTRACT

Objectives

The “decision” to go to work, or remain absent, when unwell undermines worker energy. I is therefore understandable that low work performance is one of the main consequences of the act of presenteeism. This study evaluated the association between presenteeism, and absolute and relative work performance among fruit farm workers in Northeast Brazil.

Methods

A cross-sectional study investigated 340 paid employees of both sexes, aged 18 years or over, who worked during the 2019 irrigated fruit harvest in the municipality of Petrolina, Northeast Brazil. Absolute and relative work performance were measured using the Health and Work Performance Questionnaire. Workers who answered “one or more days” to the question “How many days have you worked this season when you were injured or unwell?” were considered presenteeists. Poisson regression with robust variance models was used to estimate the prevalence ratios of the main associations, adjusted for potential confounders.

Results

Presenteeist workers presented lower absolute and relative work performance than non-presenteeist workers according to the strata for most of the investigated factors. The associations between presenteeism, and absolute (adjusted prevalence ratio = 1.31) and relative work performance (adjusted prevalence ratio = 1.45) remained strong, even after multiple adjustments for other relevant variables.

Conclusion

Presenteeist fruit culture workers self-assessed their work performance as lower than non-presenteeist ones.

KEYWORDS:

• Work performance
• presenteeism
• rural workers
• agricultural crop

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Study data are available under reasonable request to the corresponding author ([email protected]).

Institution and Ethics approval and informed consent

All participants signed a free informed consent term. All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the Feira de Santana State University Ethical Board(protocol code 3.554.663, approved September 4, 2019) and the ethical standards of the Helsinki Declaration version 2013.

Additional information

Funding

Grant sponsor: Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), Grant number: 304085/2022-7.