"There is this myth of the infallible framework, but it is counterproductive"

Fall sick. Consult your doctor. To be stopped the time to recover from his illness. A schema altogether quite clbadic. Yet nearly one out of four private employees who have been prescribed a sick leave in 2018 has waived partial or total, a figure rising, according to a study on absenteeism at work published Wednesday by Malakoff Médéric .

According to this survey conducted by Ifop in May with 2,010 private sector employees, 42% of respondents were prescribed a sick leave in the last twelve months. Among them, 23% have decided not to respect their sick leave, compared to 19% in 2016. The complete non-compliance with sick leave is particularly marked among salaried managers (48%) and executives (22%, against 11% among blue-collar workers), as well as in the hotel-restaurant (30%) and trade (19%, compared to 6% in banking-finance-insurance) sectors.

"This trend responds to the Western myth of the framework, which must be infallible," says Philippe Zawieja, psychosociologist specializing in burnout, badociate researcher at the Université de Sherbrooke in Quebec and member of the National Health and Quality of Life Commission. job. Interview.

Why do some employees of the private sector choose not to respect the prescription of their sick leave?

There is the idea that from the moment one starts to feel a little better, one will prefer to return to work, even in a way slowed down by one's state of health, to avoid having to manage a absence which will not be replaced and which leads to a work overload piled up at the time of recovery.

This is all the more true for executives, a socio-professional category where this infallible frame myth reigns, which is very time-consuming, takes few vacations and remains connected and reachable all the time.

It is the result of a pressure that very often is self imposed. There is at once the sensation that one is indispensable and that one has no right to stop, and at the same time filigree the fear of knowing that one is just perfectly replaceable. . This explains hyperactive professional behaviors and the tendency to presenteeism. If the trend is not specifically French – Japan has pushed this concept to its climax – it is on the other hand the very foundation of the Western vision of work, under which one finds a valorization and a social blooming by the job.

But at the same time, employees are more numerous – 49% in 2018, against 39% in 2016 – to regret not having taken this time to ensure their convalescence …

It's a pretty perverse gear. The employee who gives up his sick leave will tend to think that he can not put his work on pause time to recover, that it is too important. But at the same time he is increasingly attracted by the Scandinavian model, which promotes efficiency in work while offering much more time to devote to his private and family sphere.

The employee who does not respect his work stoppage is also marked by a certain social representation related to work and sick leave: there is this cliché that many work stoppages are complacent and therefore it is wrong seen to be prescribed one. It is fueled by this other cliché that public service workers have an excessive reliance on work stoppages. This, coupled with the fact that the differences in the number of days of deficiency
employees of the private sector make that stop can represent a loss of income.

The problem is that this posture ends up being counterproductive: we do not take the time to convalescence, while its duration is precisely evaluated by the doctor who prescribes the work stoppage. Result: we resume its activity in a state that does not allow it completely, we get tired more, we stay sick longer for lack of rest, we tend to fall sick more easily and ultimately, we are less productive.

This is not good at the individual level, but it can in some cases have economic and health consequences at the community level. Take the example of a work stoppage prescribed for an infectious disease, such as a flu or a gastro. By not stopping or not long enough, the employee runs the risk of contagion to his colleagues, or even to his patients if it is a professional of the
health.

39% of sick leaves are related directly or indirectly to the professional context. Is work getting sicker today?

I would say that today we are looking more at the influence of work in the onset of the disease, be it physical, such as musculoskeletal or psychological disorders.

For a number of years now, we have seen this Western trend that we tend to attribute the cause of our health problem to our work, but this cause can be multifactorial. This is in line with the whole debate over recent years on the recognition of burn out.