Most of us have gone to work while sick at some point in our careers, either out of a sense of obligation, an appointment or deadline that couldn't be missed, or just a "tough guy" attitude that motivates us to muddle through no matter what. The technical term for working while sick is "presenteeism," which the Harvard Business Review estimates could cost U.S. employers alone $150 billion annually in lost productivity because of reduced output from those who are ill, the infection of co-workers, etc.

Unified communications and mobility could be important tools to combat presenteeism among information workers. Because these tools significantly diminish the importance of “place,” where you work becomes much less meaningful as long as you have the right tools at your disposal. 

To be sure, in-person meetings within your company, at trade shows, on customer visits and the like will continue to have value and will never be completely supplanted by unified communications, Web conferencing and other tools. However, these tools can replace much of this in-person contact and can allow people to be more productive, especially when their presence would be inconvenient, such as when they’re sick.

If you’re an influencer trying to justify unified communications in your organization based on presenteeism, you’re probably not going to get very far. Because presenteeism doesn’t have any hard costs associated with it – nobody writes a check for lost productivity when their employees get sick – many will agree that these costs exist, but won’t do much about solving the problem by deploying technology to minimize productivity losses.

That said, what do you say? How useful is or would unified communications be to you as an employee or an employer? Please send me an e-mail with your thoughts.

Michael Osterman is principal analyst of Osterman Research.