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Free tools for HR leaders

Presenteeism cost
calculator

Estimate what it costs your business when people show up but are not able to do their best work.

Your numbers

Hidden productivity loss
 
Share
What is presenteeism?

Presenteeism is when people come to work but are not able to perform at their usual level, often because of illness, stress or burnout. They are present, so the lost productivity does not show up in absence records, which is why it tends to go unmeasured.

How we calculated this

We take the share of your people you estimate are working while affected by mental ill-health or burnout, and multiply it by headcount to get a number of people. That number is multiplied by average salary and by the share of their output you estimate is lost while affected. The result is salary paid for output you did not receive, spread across people who were at work the whole time. It is an estimate built on your two percentages, and it moves as they do. The working, the assumptions and the sources are below.

New to the term? Read the plain-English definition of presenteeism in the HR Glossary.

Your working
Assumptions
  • Both percentages are your estimates. The defaults (20% affected, 15% output lost) are placeholders for a conversation rather than a diagnosis. KPMG and Mental Health Australia put the average annual cost of mental ill-health at A$3,200 per employee with a mental illness (up to A$5,600 for severe conditions), which is a useful sanity check against your result.
  • Only the productivity loss while at work is counted. Absence days, turnover, workers' compensation and the colleagues who absorb the work are excluded, so the figure is a floor.
  • Base salary only, no on-costs. Australian research consistently finds presenteeism costs more than absenteeism (Medibank estimated 6.5 working days of productivity lost per employee a year to it), so if you have already run the absence calculator, expect this number to be larger.
  • Nothing here identifies any individual. It is a business-level estimate of scale, and it is not a clinical measure.
Sources

What to do about it

Presenteeism is the cost that never books a meeting. No one is absent and nothing is late enough to escalate; the output just quietly runs at 85%. The number above is a scale rather than a diagnosis, and the steps are for whoever looks after wellbeing or the climate of a team, whether or not they hold a budget.

1

Put it next to the workload data

Overtime hours, after-hours email, leave not taken, roles vacant for more than 60 days. Presenteeism follows load. If those four are climbing in the same teams the number above sits in, you have your cause, and it is a design problem the business owns rather than a resilience problem the individual does.

2
Where a tool helps

Ask the question that measures it

One item on your pulse survey: "in the last month, how often has your health or stress got in the way of doing your job?" Read it by team, quarterly. It is the closest thing to a direct measure of presenteeism you will get, and it turns your 20% guess into a number.

3

Do the psychosocial risk assessment you already owe

Australian work health and safety law treats psychosocial hazards (excessive job demands, low control, poor support, bullying and harassment) as risks an employer must identify and manage, and Safe Work Australia's model code sets out how. Doing it properly for the highest-strain teams is both the legal floor and the fastest fix.

4

Fix the manager's load before the team's

Strained managers produce strained teams. Check the span of control, whether the manager has been trained to notice strain, whether they take their own leave, and whether they are working the hours they tell their team not to. Most presenteeism in a team is copied from the top of it.

5

Re-run this with the pulse data in six months

Swap the estimated share affected for the measured one from step 2, and the estimated output loss for a considered figure. Compare. The number moving in the right direction, by team, is the evidence for whatever you asked leadership for in step 1.

Step 2 needs a read
earlier than sick days.

Compono Engage is an employee engagement platform that reads culture and climate alongside work personality, team by team, so pressure shows up in the climate read before it shows up in the absence data. Wellbeing surveys give you a snapshot of how people feel. Engage shows which teams are carrying too much and how the people in those teams respond to load, which is what decides who is quietly running at 85%.

That is step 2 measured on a cadence, and step 3's highest-strain teams already identified. The figure above is the scale of the loss. Engage tells you where it is concentrated while support can still help.

See how it works
Compono Engage
8%+
reduction in turnover

Common questions

Why does presenteeism cost more than absenteeism?

Absence is visible and finite, so teams can plan around it. Presenteeism is ongoing and invisible, affecting more people for longer, and it can spread as workloads shift onto colleagues. Long-standing Australian research (Medibank, Sick at Work) finds the presenteeism bill is the larger of the two.

Are these numbers a diagnosis of my team's mental health?

No. This calculator gives a business-level estimate of productivity cost using published benchmarks. It is not a clinical or diagnostic tool, and it says nothing about any individual. Treat it as a prompt to look at workload, support and culture.

Where do the benchmark figures come from?

The per-employee cost range comes from KPMG and Mental Health Australia's Investing to Save research (2018). These are population-level averages, so your real figure will vary with your industry, roles and the support already in place.

This page is general information, not legal advice. We check figures annually and update them on a best-efforts basis, but employment rules change and we cannot promise everything here is current or complete. Before you act on it, confirm the detail with the relevant authority in your country or your own adviser. Last reviewed July 2026.

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Absenteeism cost calculator

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Presenteeism

The plain-English definition, with the calculators and rules that sit around it.

Read the definition →Talk to us

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