AUDIO VERSION - Presenteeism is Costing You 10x More Than Absenteeism: How to Fix It

What if I told you that your team isn't burned out because they're weak, but because your systems are? Today's corporate world is grappling with a silent productivity killer called presenteeism. Are you familiar with it? As a leader, you have to be. Simply, your people are showing up, but they've already checked out, and it's costing your business more than you think. From overwhelmed working parents To team members quietly battling burnout, mental overload isn't a personal failure. It's a systematic leadership blind spot. When we expect peak performance without flexibility, empathy, or support, presenteeism becomes the norm, and innovation, retention, and morale take the hit. In this powerful episode, we're joined by Rebecca Reed, global workplace wellbeing specialist, founder of Seendo, and creator of the Mental Flex Method to unpack why mental health can't be left at home and why leaders must stop treating well-being as a nice-to-have and start seeing it as a business strategy. As we get started, you can learn more about Rebecca simply by going to siendo.co.uk.

Welcome to Shedding the Corporate Bitch, the podcast that transforms today's managers into tomorrow's powerhouse leaders. Your host, Bernadette Boas, executive coach and author, brings you into a world where the corporate grind meets personal growth and success in each and every episode. Let's do this.

Rebecca, welcome, welcome, welcome. How are you?

So good to be here.

I am so thrilled you are here. I'm really excited about this topic, actually very intrigued around presenteeism and whether or not even our listeners and viewers are very aware of it. And yet they need to be. Uh, so we'll get into all that, but before we do, could you help our viewers and listeners to get to know Rebecca?

Yeah, I love that. So from a personal point of view, um, I live in the UK and I have a little boy who's, what, 3, 3 and a half now. So as you can imagine, I'm exhausted. But, um, very— yeah, just a, just a very lovely life in, in England. And from a business point of view, I run a well-being company called Siendo, and I kind of got into that personally because I just went on this big well-being journey around myself and my own mental health and learning about how just like what my triggers were and why I was 20 years old and throwing grenades into my life left, right and center. And it was just like a really fascinating journey. And I fell in love with the area and I saw the implications of people with everything around me. And I just, yeah, just knew it was something I had to do then. So birthed Siendo.

That is fabulous. And yes, everyone, I wanna remind you, you can check out more about what Rebecca does even as we get into this conversation at siendo.co.uk. I fumbled on the word a number of times, before we got on, on the program, but could you help our viewers and listeners understand what presenteeism is?

Okay, so I always describe it like the cousin of absenteeism. So you've got absenteeism, obviously, where people are off work, they're sick for whatever reason, um, and then you got presenteeism where people are still showing up to work but it's bums on seats, but nobody's home. So the productivity is lower, whether it's because they're in, you know, something going through something personally, they might be going through physical pain, mental pain, they might be going, they might be just disengaged because the work isn't fulfilling enough. There's multitude of reasons, but it's that disengagement, that low productivity, that means even though they're there, they're not actually doing much for whatever reason that being.

Now, you said it's a cousin of absenteeism, but is it actually more cost prohibitive to have people at work not producing than it is if they were to acknowledge that they're sick and they stay home?

Yeah, yeah, really good question. So, and well, like, so for UK, for example, in the UK, there the cost of poor mental health is $51 billion a year, right? And within this $51 billion, you've got 24 of that billion is from presenteeism. So like nearly half of it is from that cost. And then the rest of it is split between absenteeism and staff turnover. So it's not even like half absenteeism, half presenteeism. So you've got a massive amount. And if you go to the US, then you've got with absenteeism, they reckon it's $150 $150 per employee per day, um, per year, $150 per employee per year from just being off work versus $1,500 per employee per year for presenteeism.

10 times more.

10 times more.

Wow. And how aware and how attentive our leaders up and down the food chain, meaning from the top of the C-suite all the way down to new hire managers, how aware are they of this?

I would say it's mixed from my experience so far. And I do think there'll be elements in that whether actually, you know, we're not assuming that sometimes it's the leaders and the managers who are disengaged. Sometimes it's, you know, especially if you've got what's commonly referred to as accidental managers, where often the promotional ladder takes them into management roles, but they're not actually prepared for it. They're not trained for management roles, and nor sometimes they don't even want to manage. They were loving what they were doing. They wanted a pay raise. They wanted to, like, you know, continue progressing. And so the next step was managing people, and managing people is hard, right? Like, you know, you experienced it. Like, they're like, it's just difficult. And so like, if you're not trained to do it, if you're not enjoying it, then as a manager and as a leader, then you're going to be disengaged as well. So there's so many different layers involved.

Yes. And I would love to kind of understand, or at least have our listeners and viewers acknowledge to themselves, are you one of those accidental managers? Or do you know of accidental managers in your workspace who you started paying attention to them, right? They would be— maybe they would see that they are struggling with presenteeism and therefore be able to somehow get it addressed. Is that a fair question to be asking?

Yeah, I think there's, there's a lot of, um, there's a lot of power that can come from a company taking responsibility around if we're going to put people into management positions, we need to give them the tools to do that. And some of my best clients are those that like set up leadership programs, that like do succession planning and think, right, what do we want our future leaders to be like? And they prepare them before they even get into the role. Like, that's incredible. And so, like, if you're, if you're putting the groundwork in so that the managers are capable and able and you're, you know, and equally, Maybe they don't want to be managers, but they still need a promotion, and that's okay. So are there other routes within a company that people can take where they get more responsibility, they get more involved, they get higher wages, but they don't have to take on people as a result of that? Yeah.

Well, you talked about the fact that this is caused by burnout, it's caused by work overload, it's caused by anxiety, it's caused by a number of things. How many of the managers that you're aware of would acknowledge that? Because they might see that their pride could get in the way and they may see that as a ding to them that if they acknowledge these things, you know, they're going to be— and they'll be revamped possibly as a result of them acknowledging to someone that they are burned out, they are overloaded, they are stressed and anxious. Is that an issue?

It's a real fear, like, you know, what they found, so they did a whole host of different surveys around if you were struggling with your mental health, would you tell your manager the real reason why? And they found, and there's a range of different surveys, they found answers between about 65 to 95% of people wouldn't tell their manager if they were struggling from a mental health perspective. They were more likely to say that they were struggling from a physical health perspective. So they would say, oh, it's my back, I've got headache, I've got upset stomach, rather than actually go, I'm struggling, I'm burnt out. Especially if the culture is built around not showing weakness. There's some workplaces where they do have that kind of, you know, if you're taking— if you're leaving the office at even like at 5 o'clock, then you're part-timer. Like, there's comments made, you know, like even if you're, you know, you're a parent and you're trying to all the plates and, and pick up your children, do everything else, and it's the kind of— you're treated differently. So if you are struggling, you are overloaded, no wonder that keeps you silent.

And would there be an element of companies allowing their people to look at it proactively even before they have an issue, almost like mental fitness as opposed to the stigma around mental health?

I love the term mental fitness. So it's something something that I've incorporated in a lot of my work now because I've noticed that people are more open talking about mental fitness, like physical fitness, than they are talking about their mental health. And whilst there's two arguments to that, I think there's a big, there's a big factor that we need to be taking the fear away around mental health because often there's a lack of understanding that we all have it. So we all have mental health. It's all part of our overall health. Because if we all have mental health and we're all going to have, you know, throughout our lives we'll experience ups and downs and that's completely natural. We all have it. Why wouldn't we talk about it? Right. Take that fear away around mental health firstly. But also it's kind of also acknowledging that we need to meet people where they are. And if we are still trying to undo decades and decades of fear around mental health, then mental fitness is a really powerful angle. And that's where we can be that really kind of early intervention prevention side of things that you talk about of being like, what can we do to support really, really positive mental fitness in the workplace? You know, what can people do for themselves as well? So they're taking their own accountability to make sure that they are looking after themselves, they're embedding practices and working out your mind just like you work out your body in the gym.

I love that, work out your mind. The same way you work out your body at the gym, or if you're a runner or a cyclist outside, whatever the case might be. Now, what I was thinking about too is this also requires leaders to not only address the business aspects of what someone might be dealing with, and not only what the culture or the business industry has embedded in us you know, since we were young, but also even our close-knit family, you know, community, society has embedded in us. And therefore, that requires leaders to get personal from a coaching development perspective, start digging into where is it coming from that you feel as if you have to always be on, that you have to be perfect, that you have to be robotic versus use your heart. Is that what you're seeing as well?

Often with all this always-on experience and this hyperproductivity that often comes with leaders, they get— they work really, really hard, they do a lot, they get to the top, and they often can't switch off, right? And there's part of that is keep in mind that with stress, okay, so stress has multiple different responses to it, doesn't it? Like, probably heard of the fight or flight kind of response. And there's also the freeze, and there's also a kind of overlapping behavior there, fawn as well. Now, flight, I can talk about all of them, but fight is one of the ones we see a lot within managers, leaders, high performers, and fight is not just what we typically know as shouting, arguing, controlling, things like that, but actually fight, a massive part of a fight response is hyperproductivity. And so what you get is that you will have someone who is like, has learned through years and years and years that if I keep going, keep going, keep working, keep working harder, keep doing this, keep solving one more problem, fix one more thing, answer one more email, I'll be safe, I'll be okay. And so they keep going and keep going and keep going. And what happens is that they hear all this stuff around, you need to relax, you need to just chill, why don't you go meditate and everything will be fine. And they just they can't, right, because they're wired. And I always think, you know, you're someone in a fight response, they, they have wired their brain over years and years and years of doing this, that they've wired this response that their brain has learned, if I slow down, I'm in danger, if I stop, that can equal death. Like, that's what your brain learns, right? And so then you're telling someone to slow down and, you know, chill and all this stuff that's not useful. And it's like you're trying, they go 90 miles per hour and you're trying to get them to slam on the handbrake. And so when they try and meditate, they try and relax, they try and work a little less, it's their body and their brain, their nervous system is resisting because they don't feel safe. It's a learned response. And so, well, I think that everything across the board, like those like who coach like yourself, like everyone in the workplace, we I think the first and foremost, most important thing is we need to really create more safety. Like, if we've got safety there, if as everyone in an individual point of view, if we can create more safety in our nervous system, like if we can regulate ourselves, like I know fight is one of my default, right? So I got so interested in it because I remember like years and years ago saying to my husband, like before I knew any of this, I remember saying to him like, I don't know how to slow down. Like, you don't understand. Like, I can't slow down. Yeah, exactly. I can see that.

I was there as well.

Yeah, you're like, I can't, I can't do it. And I just created it as if it was my identity. But then I didn't realize that actually it was a fear response. So as leaders, I recognize it in themselves or in their staff, recognizing that hyperproductivity sometimes isn't just like this wonderful performance side of things. Sometimes it's a fear response from an unsafe nervous system. And so getting people to, you know, like I know for me, if I'm trying to regulate when I'm in a fight state, I need to go for a walk really fast outside with a podcast on and be productive and listen to your podcast. And I'm like, "Right, no, I'm doing good," because that's how I can regulate myself slowly and slowly reduce from 90 miles per hour.

Right.

Rather than slamming on the handbrake so that when I get home, then maybe I can sit down and sit still, or I can step away from my desk. So I've met myself where I am. And so I really think there's a lot of power in there of understanding what's driving our responses, understanding that hyperproductivity is often a fear response, and then really looking at how we can regulate our nervous systems. Like, everything comes down to that. Everything.

Now, obviously that requires an individual to take responsibility, to really get to know themselves, to pay attention, If the leaders are ill-equipped, who do you see is responsible for the focus on mental fitness in the workplace?

I think it's such a— it's always been a debated one, right? Because you'll have— and it's probably embedded historically as well— you have companies who are like, well, you know, we put stuff out there for our employees, but they're not taking it up. So they'll try initiatives, employees won't use them, you won't utilize them. And so they stop. Or they won't let you know. So there's companies that are trying, it's not being utilized by the employee. So there's definitely an employee accountability part there that, you know, you need to be able to take responsibility for your own mental fitness as well. But equally with a company is understanding that, you know, we put out the standard stuff, right? We put out, maybe we put an employee assistance program, we put out, and we might put out some wellbeing sessions once a, once a year, we put out some different things, But if we don't know, one, what our employees need and want, then, then that utilization isn't going to happen, right? And like, I always think, you know, things like if our employees don't feel safe because all the financial crisis stuff going on or because of all the politics, because all this stuff, it's natural that our employee is not going to feel safe. If you're going, do you want to come and meditate? And that might be really, really difficult for them to do. And when all they really want is more money. Right? So like, maybe you can offer some coupons. Maybe you can offer something like jewellery. So you've got to find out what your employees need in order to feel safe. And I think that responsibility, there is a massive responsibility from a company point of view there. Because I run my own company and I couldn't imagine like if my work, that my work and working for Siendo was destroying someone's well-being. I would be wanting to know why. Like I would be wanting to look upstream and be like, What is it in the processes? Like, what is it in the way that we're working? What is it in the culture that's creating this? Like, I, like, taking responsibility of knowing that it's not solely on the employee while they have to play a big role. You've got to look at the bigger picture of why it's like that in the first place as well.

Right, because it could be everything from there's too many meetings.

Mm-hmm.

Too much on people's plates that, you know, some people are doing multiple roles, right? You know, they're doing the work of 3 or 4 people. And I'm even talking leaders, not just the workers. And, you know, it could be the fact that it's not a physical, like, okay, go and meditate. It's not a— it's a go to a fitness program, go to a gym, we'll give you access to free lunches. But it's more even looking at outdated systems, outdated technologies. That are creating a lot of stress and anxiety for people. And so have you ever given them a checklist? You know, do organizations kind of have a checklist of all the things that they should be looking at when it comes to their employees' well-being overall?

That's a really interesting question. So I've done like, I've done audits with companies before, and that's been quite interesting where we've looked at their like, what has there been like their well-being initiatives? What is it being used as? Like, what, what are they missing? And we've done like a gap analysis. With things like that. It was a really interesting one where they had a therapist that was visiting every, like, it was every Thursday they had a therapist and they had it and they had their own room, wellbeing room, and they were like, no one is using it. And they were, it's in a law firm, it's a very stressed place, like they needed it, right? And they couldn't understand why they didn't, weren't using it. And when we looked at it, it was the fact that this wellbeing room was at the end of a corridor and they had to walk past all their colleagues to get there. And so they weren't willing to do that because there was only one place they were obviously going. Right. So it was not— so you can look at, okay, what do we need? And I think a checklist is such a powerful idea of being like, you know, have you thought about these angles? Have you thought about employee engagement from these angles? And always having like a blueprint.

What are the reasonings that employees are given beyond the fact that they have to walk down a hallway You know, what are the other reasons why they're not taking advantage of it?

Hmm. It's, I think, I think mixture. So I think one of the things is that when you got into a state of burnout, there's 3 core characteristics that often come from it. It's not just exhaustion, which is often what we think of when we think of burnout, but you've got a real kind of lack of engagement and cynicism that comes from burnout. So if someone has lost interest, they've got very detached, they've got very cynical, then when they see stuff put out about the wellbeing, this is here for you because we care, and they're like, you don't care, like I am burnt out, like, and they will be so detached, it's like they're behind a thick wall of glass, so you can't reach them. And because all of that kind of, when you get into a state of burnout, you don't, it doesn't happen overnight, it's the slow erosion of coping skills that happen again and again and again, that they get so emotionally depleted, they have detach themselves for self-preservation. They don't even do it consciously, so they will just have to be like, like their brain and nervous system goes, I cannot feel anymore, I cannot connect with this anymore. So they get that detachment. So a lot of the wellbeing initiatives and things like that won't land. And then you also, you get people feeling like they're not being productive, they don't feel like they're adding any value. And so I think once they've got into that state, they're so disengaged because it's the only way they can keep themselves safe. That those wellbeing initiatives just won't land. So you've got elements like that. You've got the fact that sometimes people run them over lunchtime. They'll be like lunch and learn or things like that. And people, yeah, they want to get away from their desk or after work, they want to go home. Like, so it was like thinking about how can you feed this stuff into their day and then really make sure that the permission is across the whole organization to be like, you're not working any meetings at this time. Everyone's calendar's blocked with these hours because this is happening. Yeah, overload.

And my question earlier about like who should own this, typically people will go right to, oh, HR, this is an HR problem that needs to be solved. Do you find that that's true, or is it like a C-suite issue that unless they're all on board and they're going to push it down into their organizations, it's never going to fly? What do you find when you, when you look at ownership?

Ah, such a— like, it's so difficult, I say, because HI often falls to the feet of HR. Absolutely right. Like, it's— and it's not because it should, but that's where it falls, because they are the people, the people carers, the people, the people people of the organization. Now, what you're getting at the moment is that you've got a massive kind of crisis with HR where they are burning out. Like, they— their mental health— like, there's a whole kind of a lot of discussion at the moment around the mental health crisis of HR folk, because they are people who are dealing day to day with, they're dealing with staff who are going through grief, they're dealing with staff with a whole range of different things, they're sitting with those, with people in the company, holding space for some of the worst moments of their life. They're, you know, they're in between the leaders and the people trying to balance what's best, and yet because they're there, then they're the face of that, they become on the firing line. So everyone demonizes HR and then someone will have one bad experience with HR and then HR are evil. And so it's like, and HR, I work so much with HR and they are some of the most incredible people I have ever met. They're in this work, like people don't go into HR for the sake of it. Like people go into HR because they care. And so like these people are burning out because of all these different reasons. Now the difficulty comes as well because obviously their HR have a certain level of ability to book things in and organize things, they have that, but if they're not sitting on the board, if they haven't got a voice in the boardroom, then they don't have enough power to move an initiative forward. And so if the CEO or the C-suites aren't on board and they don't see the value, which there's a huge amount of value in prioritizing wellbeing, if they hadn't got that same lens, then they're hitting a brick wall, which is frustrating, but then they're seen as not providing it. Now, the only argument I would say from that is there's always this kind of, this opinion that we have of, if the leaders aren't on board, then we can't shift things. But there's a really interesting, I got introduced to it recently, this book called The Influentials, really interesting where they say that 1/10 of Americans decide what the other 9/10 of Americans eat, vote, everything. Like, they have a vast amount of, like, influence. And what this says is that the actual influencers, um, who we, we often think of C-suites as leaders, are actually not the influencers that we, like, have often have the most power. It's the people amongst us. It's the people that you're in a meeting with them and they're talking and you're going like this. You know, it's when you, when someone talks, you turn around and listen. They're the influencers, like they're the people that if you get in there, the power that you can have from them being amongst the people, that if, you know, you've got Sharon and Bob and everyone over there who are influential, if they are starting the conversation, if they are driving the message up to leadership as well, so it's not resting solely on HR's back, then you've got that movement that will happen because they— there's a lot of power not just within that, that higher levels. And so I always, I always encourage people to look at like, where are the influentials? Like, where are the influencers in the room? Utilize them and they will be a lot of power in helping move stuff.

Interesting. So yeah, so it would be valuable for HR to go and seek a kind of a committee of those individuals along with them. If we have listeners and viewers and their teams who are struggling with this, struggling with burnout, struggling with mental health, struggling with overall stress and anxiety, what would be one strategy or tip you want— would want to provide them to be able to then leave this conversation and start chipping away at it? You know, one small step at a time can lead to big results. What would that be?

Yeah, I love that. And the biggest thing I would say is that everything starts with safety. Everything, right? If the more we can do to regulate our nervous system and calm our safety— and by that, it sounds like techno babble, but by that I mean, like, if you don't— if you are in a state of fight-flight, whatever you're in, and you can't work like that properly, you can't produce properly, you can't function properly because you're in a heightened state. And so the best thing we can do for ourselves is find ways to regulate. Like, we are acknowledging the elephant in the room and being like, actually, there's a lot going on in the world right now. It's really, really hard. Like, it's understandable that I would be feeling this way. Like, rather than trying to pretend that everything's okay and, and giving ourselves stick for not being resilient enough. I think there's so much resilience fatigue around now because we're told we need to be more resilient, we need to be more resilient. Well, like that, you know, it's like telling people to be resilient is like getting them to scoop water out of their boat while we haven't plugged the hole. And so like what we want to get to the point of is, is helping people to feel safe. And there's a lot we can do, psychological safety in the workplace, but for ourselves, like there's, um, there's a really good book. I can't remember her whole name, it's like Dr. Narina, you might be able to find it and put in the notes, um, it's called Finding Inner Safety. And she talks about loads of stuff around. It's such a beautiful book. Like, I went through it and, you know, when you start highlighting and underlining stuff because you're like, oh yes, yes, by the end of it I was literally just highlighting the whole book because it was incredible. And so like Finding Inner Safety is this, this book that talks about— she does a lot on sleep because she says that if you don't feel safe, you can't sleep. So when you're like, if you're getting this insomnia a lot, if you're waking up in the morning with and anxiety, all this stuff, it's a sign that you don't feel safe. Your nervous system hasn't regulated. Is that a lot of physical pain, such as back pain, is actually driven by suppressed emotions, suppressed anger, burnout, stress. And back pain is such a big thing where they'll, you know, often people are diagnosed with non-specific back pain, um, and what they find is that non-specific, when you can't find anything and the medication's not working and, you know, all this stuff, and a lot of the scans are useless anyway. And, you know, often they find that a lot of the back pain is caused by this, all this emotion that's not been dealt with, right? So even with physical health, regulating yourself, you know, little things like, um, like you can do the smallest thing like putting your feet on the grass. Like, I do the little thing of I, anytime I start noticing I feel unsafe, I literally put my hand on my heart and say, I'm safe. I'm safe. And it's little things like that. It doesn't have to be massive, you know, taking time away from your desk, going outside, being in nature. Our brains love, love being out. All these little things that we can do.

When you say someone feels unsafe and then, you know, you use the example of not being able to sleep, describe that form of unsafe that you're talking about.

So that safety comes from like, basically your nervous system is like your scanner. Okay, so it's scanning for danger around you always. And so that's where psychological safety comes into the workplace, because you're in the workplace scanning, going, if I put my hand up in a meeting, am I gonna lose face professionally? Am I gonna lose face personally? You're scanning for the risk of putting your hand up, challenging an idea, saying no, all this stuff. And if your nervous system scans and goes, no, the risk is too high, like, no, the reward isn't high enough, then you will keep your hand down, or you won't say anything. You won't say that you're struggling, you won't say that you're burning out. So our scanner is responsible for whether we feel psychologically safe in the workplace. And so that's one element, but then equally, the safety within our own lives. So if, for example, we are, and we've gone through trauma and we haven't regulated from that, we haven't gone through the recovery work, then we are on a hypervigilant state. Our nervous systems are going, where's, where's danger? Where's danger? It can be anywhere. And what happens is that you basically have to reteach your brain and reteach your body that you are okay and you are safe. It's like, it's basically like, you know, all the stress management stuff like that is helping to regulate your nervous system. Like all the stuff that you do for your well-being, that helps regulate nervous system, connection, like all this stuff helps to regulate. It's just that we don't understand it because no one talks to us about it. No one trains us on this. We don't understand it enough. And we don't, you know, that kind of flight or fight and stuff. We don't meet ourselves where we are. Right. So we try and regulate in a way that doesn't fit our response.

Okay. And you, one last thing is you talked about what an individual can do for themselves, and that is self-regulate. What can one of our leaders that are listening or watching, what can they do to help their team members in regards to their well-being and to minimize this presenteeism?

Yeah, yeah. So there's a really big one where you've got the fact that one, and I think with managers, we like, we don't want to never feel afraid to label the elephant in the room. I always say that, you know, like often we're, we're afraid to say, you know, workload's really tough at the moment, or things have, you know, things like when people go through restructuring, like, you know, they'll, they'll kind of just not talk about it. But actually saying, look, I know, and I know everyone's going to feel quite uncertain at the moment, everyone's going to feel on edge, that is natural, you know, we're going to, and I will keep communicating to you. And I think you can't over-communicate when your team don't feel safe.

So communicate.

Communicate, like really label the elephant in the room, because they've actually got research around this that they say when you label emotions, it actually diffuses some of the impact of the emotions. So by labeling that, of course, everyone's going to feel fear. There's so much going on politically. There's so much going on. Labeling that will reduce some of the impact of it. So communication around that is huge. One of the things managers can do as well is like learn around their well-being and conversational side of things. So put themselves through training around how to hold safe conversations around mental health, so that when their team do bring mental health conversations to them, they don't panic, because again, no one trains them in that. Give them themselves those skills, and then also I think there's probably two more I'd say, is bring your team into the decision-making as much as possible. So what we often do, there's often a lot of kind of decisions that are fed down from the top. And when they found that when employees don't have autonomy, um, over the day, over the decisions that are being made, then that lack of control can lead to stress and burnout really badly. Like, humans need control, right? Right. So how can you bring your, your team into decisions? Like, they found that when you— people are part of change, when they are part of the whole process, they actually buy in more to change if it's part of that. So that's huge. And then also, so you've got communication, you've got mental health skills, you've got part of the change, and the fourth one, a big part of psychological safety, is encouraging people to challenge you. So, um, they often— we get— we fear challenge, right? We fear, um, we feel like if people challenge us and they're challenging our authority, they're challenging our work, they're challenging our intelligence, But actually, what they found is challenges are an incredible part of people showing that they feel safe around you. If people are safe enough to challenge you, that's a powerful thing. People are better when they challenge each other. People think that you get more innovation, everything. And so what we want to make sure we're doing is encouraging them to challenge us. If you think there's a better way we can do it, tell me. Let's put out ideas. There's no— and then when people do challenge you, deal with it well. You know, so, and I think, always think, if you invite people to challenge you, when they do, it doesn't feel so scary because you've actually invited them to do that and they're just doing what you've said. Can I give you one more book recommendation as well?

Absolutely.

Unlearn Your Pain, um, I can't remember the guy from it, I'll have to send it to you. Unlearn Your Pain is an incredible one if physical pain is one of those um, things that someone's dealing with in the workplace. And Learn Your Pain takes you through like a 28-day program of how to calm your nervous system and how to work through the pain. And it's been incredible for helping people fix and like basically move from a life full of pain to no pain. But it's so, so powerful considering back pain is one of the most common things people experiencing lately, like physically. It's something that will help you regulate your nervous system mentally and physically.

Rebecca, thank you so much. This has been terrific.

You're so welcome. Have a lovely, lovely day.

You too. Presenteeism as opposed to absenteeism. Rebecca explains the difference between the two and at the same time explains why the former, presenteeism, is far more costly than absenteeism. We'll make sure all of those books are referenced in our show notes with the author and where you can pick them up. And really think about what is your role and responsibility to not only to your team, but to your organization around providing the resources, providing the support, providing the programs that will attract your employees to taking care of themselves, engaging with those programs, with those initiatives, with those resources and that support. Support and addressing what is it that's causing them to be burned out, to be anxious, to be checked out. And again, share this with your team members, share this with your peers. Come back each and every week for a new episode of Shedding the Corporate Bitch because we have some fabulous topics that we discuss and fabulous guests to really dive in and give you the tools and the strategies you need to be that powerhouse leader. And to do that, you can follow the show, go to ballofirecoaching.com/podcast, and you can follow along on any one of your podcast streaming services or on our Shedding the Corporate Bitch TV channel on YouTube. I'll look forward to having you for another episode of Shedding the Corporate Bitch. Bye.

Thank you for tuning in to today's episode of Shedding the Corporate Bitch. Every journey taken together is another step toward towards unleashing the powerhouse leader within you. Don't miss any of our weekly episodes. Subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you love to listen. And for those who thrive on visual content, catch us on our Shedding the Bitch YouTube channel. Want to dive deeper with Bernadette on becoming a powerhouse leader? Visit balloffirecoaching.com to learn more about how she helps professionals, HR executives, and team leaders elevate overall team performance. You've been listening to Shedding the Corporate Bitch with Bernadette Boas. Until next time, keep shedding, keep growing, and keep leading.