Presenteeism when employers are under pressure: evidence from a high‐stakes environment

This study analyses whether the decision to work while sick can be linked workload fluctuations. Drawing on data collected from professional football, we exploit dynamics of a season and use additional (national international) cup games conducted in second half as source exogenous variation. We find robust evidence that players are 6.3 percentage points more likely return injuries earlier than expected when their teams exposed high workload. The effect is driven by who important those less vulnerable injuries. Finally, presenteeism comes at cost an early comeback significantly shortening time until next injury approximately 16 days.