“No Pain No Gain”: Presenteeism Evaluation Through Calling with Job Crafting as a Sensemaking Strategy

PURPOSE: Researchers have a wide-ranging consensus on the negative side of presenteeism that leads to productivity loss; however, little is known about its flipside that has undertaken motivational factors as potential antecedents. This implicit gap is addressed by exploring a new perspective of presenteeism and proposing employees’ calling as its precursor with the help of self-determination theory (SDT). The mediating mechanism is explicated with job crafting by considering it a sensemaking strategy that offers a plausible explanation of the positive association between an employee’s calling and presenteeism. This research is an attempt to explore the positive side of presenteeism and generalize the presenteeism findings in another sector apart from the medical field, as this phenomenon is gaining widespread acceptance in HR literature. METHODS: The data were collected from 274 employees from the textile sector, and the hypotheses were tested using SmartPLS software. We collected time-lagged data from the textile sector employees of Pakistan. The individual-level data have been collected to test the relationship between calling, job crafting, and presenteeism. RESULTS: The results indicate the positive association between calling and presenteeism through direct and indirect paths. However, the mediating mechanism through two dimensions of job crafting, crafting challenging job demands and crafting social job resources, was not supported. CONCLUSION: Drawing on SDT, we contribute to the literature by identifying calling as an antecedent of presenteeism. We propose and test the direct and indirect relationships between calling, job crafting, and presenteeism. Future researchers might attempt to test this model in different sectors like multinational companies, educational institutions, healthcare, retail, etc. The proposed relationships also lend themselves to be explicated with other mediators.