Presenteeism
Presenteeism is the state of being at work while unable to work properly, whether through illness, exhaustion or preoccupation. It produces a perfect attendance record and a poor day's output. That combination is what makes it invisible to attendance reporting.
Every measure on an attendance page counts bodies and hours. Presenteeism is what happens when both of those look fine and the work is not getting done.
It is often caused by the same pressure meant to fix absence. Tighten the consequences for missing a day. People come in unwell, infect a team, and produce a week of poor work instead of losing one day. The board improves while the output falls.
No punch, scan or percentage will detect it. What detects it is a manager noticing that output stopped matching hours, then asking about it.
The word covers two different situations, and conflating them helps nobody. One is somebody unwell who came in anyway. The other is somebody well but stretched so thin the day produces nothing. The first is a sick-day policy failure. The second is a workload failure.
Where this shows up in PeopleMuster
No attendance product measures presenteeism directly. What PeopleMuster shows is the gap worth investigating: full attendance beside logged hours that no longer match it.
Questions people ask
Can presenteeism be measured?
Not directly, and any product claiming to detect it is overreaching. It is inferred from output, from quality, and from what people actually say.
Is presenteeism worse than absence?
Often, yes. One unwell person at their desk can lose a team several days of work. A single day off loses one.
What reduces presenteeism?
Making it genuinely acceptable to stay away when unwell. That is a policy and a management habit, not a setting in any system.