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Technological aid or entrapment: Extended work availability while ill in the era of always-on work

Luo Lu1* ,  Cary L. Cooper2 ,  Shu-Fang Kao3
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1 Department of Business Administration, College of Mangement, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan
2 Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
3 Department of Psychology, College of Science, Soochow University, Taipei, Taiwan
HPR, 026130066 https://doi.org/10.36922/HPR026130066
Received: 23 March 2026 | Revised: 20 July 2026 | Accepted: 28 July 2026 | Published online: 6 August 2026
© 2026 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC-by the license) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
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Abstract

In the wake of the pandemic, research on sickness presenteeism—the practice of employees working while sick—has been challenged by evolving work arrangements, including remote and work-from-home (WFH) options. At the same time, increasing emphasis on workplace well-being has drawn attention to the pressure on employees to remain always-connected or always on, which may place them at greater risk of ill health. The purpose of this conceptual/positional paper is to respond to such challenges and reposition presenteeism research to address the question, “How to work during presenteeism?” Following a purposive scoping review of the history and development of presenteeism research, we identify two fundamental challenges facing the field: (i) presenteeism is ill-defined as a unitary construct; and (ii) the measures of presenteeism as a unifaceted behavior are too restrictive. We thus propose to redefine presenteeism as the “behavior of attending work in the state of suboptimal health, with varied location choices and degree of engagement.” This broadened definition captures the duality of assiduity at work with a health incident, while encompassing the myriad manifestations of the type of health condition (physical or mental), work location (on-site or remote/WFH), and the extent of work performed (full engagement or reduced engagement) during presenteeism. A three-dimensional framework (health–location–engagement) is proposed to measure presenteeism as a multifaceted construct, as the presentee decides “how to work during presenteeism?” We then discuss possible directions for future research closely linked to the prospective three-dimensional framework of presenteeism.

Keywords
Presenteeism
Always-on work
New ways of working
Assiduity at work
Health
Funding
This work was funded by a grant from the National Science and Technology Council, Taiwan (grant no: NSTC114-2410-H-002-205-SS3).
Conflict of interest
Luo Lu is an Editorial Board Member of this journal, but was not in any way involved in the editorial and peer-review process conducted for this paper, directly or indirectly. The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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