Daily Work Attendance: A Closer Look at How It Varies

Japanese employees show a wide range of how often they come to work even when feeling unwell, according to a study that followed workers each day. Researchers used a method called experience sampling, asking participants about their daily health and work performance at short intervals. This approach gave a detailed picture of day‑to‑day changes that are often missed by standard questionnaires. The usual tool for measuring presenteeism is the World Health Organization Health and Work Performance Questionnaire (WHO‑HPQ), which asks people to recall how they performed over a longer period. The new study compared the daily data from experience sampling with the retrospective WHO‑HPQ scores to see if they line up.

Results showed that while daily presenteeism fluctuated a lot from one day to the next, the overall pattern matched what the WHO‑HPQ reported. In other words, people’s short‑term reports were consistent with their longer‑term memories when looking at the big picture. The findings suggest that experience sampling can capture subtle variations in how workers feel and perform each day, offering a richer understanding of presenteeism. It also indicates that the WHO‑HPQ remains a useful tool for assessing general trends, even though it relies on memory. Future research could use these two methods together to better design workplace health programs that adapt to daily changes in employee well‑being.

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