5.6.3. Estimating impact of presenteeism

The cost of presenteeism can be seen as ‘deadweight salary’ – salary being paid without work being produced. Utilising a salary-based conversion approach to estimate the economic burden related to presenteeism is well-established in the econometric literature [Kigozi et al., 2017 [35]].

In the OECD SPHeP-NCD model, one year of full-time equivalent presenteeism equals one year of full-time absenteeism/one year of lost salary. In terms of valuation, one full-time equivalent year of presenteeism is valued in terms of an annual average salary for a full time worker. In other words, if five years of full-time employment are lost due to presenteeism in a given country and year, then the economic burden due to presenteeism in the same year and country is equivalent to five times the corresponding average salary.