Prevalence of presenteeism among workers of an industrial company.

Background: Attending work when sick for fear of losing the job is common among workers. Presenteeism is a rising problem, which has called the attention of researchers from different fields; being difficult to notice, it also raised concerns among managers.

Objective: To establish the prevalence of presenteeism at a food industrial company.

Method: Cross-sectional epidemiological study conducted with 1,224 workers, with application of Stanford Presenteeism Scale (SPS-6) as method to investigate presenteeism.

Results: Presenteeism was adopted by 30.6% of the analyzed workers along the previous 12 months. The prevalence of presenteeism detected through SPS-6 was 50.9% for the full sample. Significant association was found between presenteeism and sedentarism, overweight and some self-reported symptoms.

Conclusion: The detected high prevalence of presenteeism and its association with sedentary lifestyle and musculoskeletal symptoms confirm the relevance of presenteeism and its negative impact on the health of workers.