Management of presenteeism. The effects on productivity of a food processing company

Presenteeism consists in going to work without conditions to produce, which can have a much higher impact than absenteeism on the productivity of an organisation. Presenteeism translates in both physical as psychological perturbations. It is a difficult to quantify reality, as is its translation into direct and indirect costs within the organisation. Our goal was to analyse the effects of presenteeism on the productivity of a company in the food-procession sector through a descriptive and transversal study of exploratory nature. The Stanford Presenteeism Scale SPS-6 (validated by Ferreira et al, 2010) and a semi-structured interview were used. Most of the workers referred having already gone to work feeling ill at least two days in the last year, mentioning that their health condition affected their performance, made them feel desperate and lacking pleasure from work. Management mentioned that presenteeism has a direct impact on productivity without, however, being able to quantify the true costs. Presenteeism is a reality in organisational scenarios, exceling in the educational and health sectors. We underline the importance of making organisations aware of the psychosocial risks and the importance of having healthy leaderships, work stress control and the presence of clinical psychologists and professional coaches.

Effects of two teaching strategies on the relationship between nursing students’ self-efficacy and performance in BLS/AED

Purpose: Nurses and nursing students are often first responders to in-hospital cardiac arrest events; thus they are expected to perform Basic Life Support (BLS) and use an automated external defibrillator (AED) without delay. The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between nursing students’ self-efficacy and performance before and after receiving a particular training intervention in BLS/AED. Materials and methods: Explanatory correlational study. 177 nursing students received a 4-h training session in BLS/AED after being randomized to either a self-directed (SDG) or an instructor-directed teaching group (IDG).1 A validated self-efficacy scale, the Cardiff Test and Laerdal SkillReporter® software were used to assess students’ self-efficacy and performance in BLS/AED at pre-test, post-test and 3-month retention-test. Independent t-test analysis was performed to compare the differences between groups at pre-test. Pearson coefficient (r) was used to calculate the strength of the relationship between self-efficacy and performance in both groups at pre-test, post-test and retention-test. Results: Independent t-tests analysis showed that there were non-significant differences (p-values > 0.05) between groups for any of the variables measured. At pre-test, results showed that correlation between self-efficacy and performance was moderate for the IDG (r = 0.53; p < 0.05) and the SDG (r = 0.49; p < 0.05). At post-test, correlation between self-efficacy and performance was much higher for the SDG (r = 0.81; p < 0.05) than for the IDG (r = 0.32; p < 0.05), which in fact was weaker than at pre-test. Finally, it was found that whereas the correlation between self-efficacy and performance increased from the post-test to the retention-test to almost reach baseline levels for the ILG (r = 0.52; p < 0.05), it slightly decreased in this phase for the SDG (r = 0.77; p < 0.05). Conclusion: Student-directed strategies may be more effective than instructor-directed strategies at promoting self-assessment and, therefore, may help to improve and maintain the relationship between nursing student self-efficacy and actual ability to perform BLS/AED.