With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, an urgent shift to flexible working arrangements was introduced both for academic and administrative staff in the UK higher education sector. However, such practices were associated with higher rates of presenteeism, and impacted staff’s mental health and wellbeing through increased hours of work.
A common theme of most research into presenteeism is that employees physically attend work while being unwell. However, ‘virtual presenteeism’ (that is, to continue working from home while being sick) is an emerging and alarming norm, bringing all the same negative aspects to the table as going to work unwell in person. Presenteeism is driven by an individual’s type of employment, years of service, and their role within the organisation. During the pandemic, many employees continued working from home while feeling unwell, often due to fears of redundancy (especially those on fixed-term contracts) or aspirations for career advancement, all the while affecting their mental health and well-being and leading to stress and burnout.
