Going Through the Motions: Policy Considerations for Addressing Mental Health-Related Worker Presenteeism in Canada
Date
2022
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
As mental illnesses in Canada have become more prevalent, a deeper examination of some key issues is required. One significant concern related to mental health is that it gives way to presenteeism – the phenomenon of employees being physically present at work but performing below capacity due to illness. This leaves workers experiencing worsened mental health outcomes and costs employers billions of dollars in lost productivity. The policy environment post COVID-19 has focused attention on mental illness as a disability and reviewing access to relevant programs that can be accessed to alleviate the financial concerns and health insecurities of people with mental illnesses.
This project uses the United Nations Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) as a guiding framework to explore alignment between rights based commitments and the current landscape of workplace disability benefit programs in Canada geared towards providing income support for people needing to take time away from work due to mental illnesses. It evaluates those programs and in doing so, isolates some potentially beneficial policy considerations that could be used in the reform of existing programs or the implementation of new ones that could address mental health-related presenteeism in Canada.
Description
Keywords
Citation
Izegbu, O. (2022) Going Through the Motions: Policy Considerations for Addressing Mental Health-Related Worker Presenteeism in Canada (Unpublished master's project). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB.