Objectives: The "decision" to go to work, or remain absent, when unwell undermines worker energy. I is therefore understandable that low work performance is one of the main consequences of the act of presenteeism. This study evaluated the association between presenteeism, and absolute and relative work performance among fruit farm workers in Northeast Brazil.
Methods: A cross-sectional study investigated 340 paid employees of both sexes, aged 18 years or over, who worked during the 2019 irrigated fruit harvest in the municipality of Petrolina, Northeast Brazil. Absolute and relative work performance were measured using the Health and Work Performance Questionnaire. Workers who answered "one or more days" to the question "How many days have you worked this season when you were injured or unwell?" were considered presenteeists. Poisson regression with robust variance models was used to estimate the prevalence ratios of the main associations, adjusted for potential confounders.
Results: Presenteeist workers presented lower absolute and relative work performance than non-presenteeist workers according to the strata for most of the investigated factors. The associations between presenteeism, and absolute (adjusted prevalence ratio = 1.31) and relative work performance (adjusted prevalence ratio = 1.45) remained strong, even after multiple adjustments for other relevant variables.
Conclusion: Presenteeist fruit culture workers self-assessed their work performance as lower than non-presenteeist ones.
Keywords: Work performance; agricultural crop; presenteeism; rural workers.