Presenteeism among German police officers. An empirical study on prevalence and reasons

摘要

Background. Attention being paid to presenteeism has risen in the scientific community during the last decade. Plenty of scientific discoveries have been made in this area, but almost none targeting police officers. The purpose of the present study, therefore, was to investigate the prevalence of sickness presence and the reasons for this behavior among German police officers. Methods. Findings of a cross-sectional analysis among policemen of two German police departments are being reported. The nonprobability sample consists of police officers from different organizational units. Data with respect to presenteeism were collected using a questionnaire developed by ZUMA, Mannheim (2002). Items based on Johansen et al. (2014) were used to identify reasons for going to work while being sick. Results. Overall, 74.6% of the respondents said they had gone to work ill during the last 12 months. In the same period, 30.0% went to work against the advice of a physician. Significant differences can be seen with regard to age (p = 0.001-0.009). Police officers under 30 years go ill to work more often than their colleagues aged 30-44 or 45-65 years. The main reason for attending work while sick is avoiding more work for one's coworkers. Conclusion. The results show that presenteeism among police officers occurs more frequently than among other occupation groups. In addition, the prevalence of sickness presence is higher than that in a Swedish police survey. This raises the question of whether German police is paying enough attention to presenteeism. Culture-changing interventions may be appropriate for the agency.