Nearly three quarters (72%) of staff go to work despite feeling so ill they could legitimately stay at home.

AXA PPP health care reports that in the past six months more than two thirds have gone to work when they were well within their rights to stay at home. And during this time 53% of respondents to the AXA PPP survey had not taken any days off sick.

The report shows that 29% of staff come to work when unwell to help out colleagues, 24% have too much to do and 15% are worried absence records could be used against them if their employer was considering redundancy.

Dudley Lusted, head of corporate healthcare and development at AXA PPP, said: "Smart employers will make sure their managers are properly trained and supported to manage attendance positively and, when people are off sick, concentrate on managing those employees whose attendance should give genuine cause for concern, whether its frequent absence-takers (often referred to as skivers) - for whom there will probably be conduct issues - or people with medical conditions that put them at risk of being off long-term."

Marketing staff are most likely to come into work when ill (87%), followed by advertising and PR (86%), and media staff and journalists (72%).