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Wellbeing Annual Report
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Quantifying the cost to business in Aotearoa New Zealand of people working when unwell.
Are your employees truly “present” at work? Or are they just showing up despite illness and burnout? In our annual Wellbeing Report 2025, we dive into the hidden cost of presenteeism across Aotearoa New Zealand.
Presenteeism refers to being present at work (either in person or online) while experiencing ill health or poor wellbeing.
Presenteeism often prevails when we should really take a sick day, but we push through or work from home instead. Or when we are experiencing high levels of stress, causing us to lose focus and often make costly errors in judgment, but we have to keep showing up at work.
Accessing data from thousands of New Zealand workers who completed our Workplace Wellbeing Assessment from 2022 to 2024, we provide business leaders with fresh insights into presenteeism at work. Presenteeism, if businesses know about the concept at all, is usually a hidden phenomenon. Ignoring presenteeism means ignoring the significant impact it can have on the long-term wellbeing of both workers and organisations through lost productivity, prolonged illness and slowed recovery. Despite all this, there is some necessary (and even functional) presenteeism.
The good news is that the same interventions that help to prevent dysfunctional presenteeism can also protect functional presenteeism.
Get in touch if you’d like to find out about how we measure presenteeism in organisations and how we can help you to create a healthier, more productive workforce.
Research findings are based on survey data collected during 2022-2024 from working New Zealanders (N = 8,634) in a variety of organisations and industries.
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