Impact of workplace conflicts on sickness presenteeism in Latvia

The study’s objective was to investigate the associations between different types of workplace conflicts and self-reported sickness presenteeism using cross-sectional survey data pooled from four periodic national surveys “Work conditions and risks in Latvia” (2006 - 2018). The studied outcome sickness presenteeism was defined as went to work while being ill. Computer-assisted personal interviewing method for data collection of randomly selected respondents was used to obtain the sample representative to the working population of Latvia. The study sample (n=6368) consisted of hired workers between 16 and 80 (average 42.9 +/- 12.6), 47.1% males and 52.9% females. The association between workplace conflicts and sickness presenteeism was analysed using binomial logistic regression with adjustment for gender, age, education, and survey year. Respondents who were not ill during the last year were a reference group. On average, 11% of respondents noted sickness presenteeism during last year. The odds of presenteeism significantly increased for all types of conflicts, but most significantly with workplace conflicts between managers and workers (OR=2.84, 95% CI 2.36-3.41) which was also the most frequent type of conflicts reported by 53.5% of all respondents. In general, the odds of sickness presenteeism increased twice for those reporting the conflicts between individual workers (OR=2.19, 95% CI 1.86-2.59), conflicts between groups of workers (OR=1.93, 95% CI 1.62-2.30) and conflicts with customers (OR=1.85, 95% CI 1.56-2.19) compared with respondents not reporting the respective types of conflicts. Significant associations between all types of analyzed conflicts and presenteeism show the need to understand the underlying causes for presenteeism to implement targeted and effective preventive measures at the organizational level. Improving managers’ leadership and human resource management skills should be prioritized as the conflicts between managers and workers were reported most often, and the chances of sickness presenteeism associated with this type of conflict increased the most.