leaveism
leaveism noun: the practice of employees using flexitime and other leave entitlement schemes to take time off when they are in fact too unwell to go to work.
Noun
leaveism (uncountable)
- The practice of employees using flexitime and other leave entitlement schemes to take time off when they are in fact too unwell to go to work.
- The practice of employees taking work away to complete outside of paid hours, e.g. at home or on holiday.
- Allied to this is the greater prevalence of 'leaveism', where employees are unable to disconnect from work because of the increased use of technology.
It occurs when staff utilise allocated time-off, including annual leave and rest days, to catch up on work obligations and to take work home with...2020 July 1, Paul Stephen, “Mental health in the workplace”, in Rail, page 51
- Allied to this is the greater prevalence of 'leaveism', where employees are unable to disconnect from work because of the increased use of technology.
Forms of leaveism
| alternative form | leavism |
|---|
Origin of leaveism
From the noun leave (“permission to be absent”) + -ism, coined in 2013 by Dr Ian Hesketh when researching wellbeing of UK police workers.
Questions about leaveism
- What does leaveism mean?
- Leaveism means the practice of employees using flexitime and other leave entitlement schemes to take time off when they are in fact too unwell to go to work.
- What part of speech is leaveism?
- Leaveism is a noun.
Words near leaveism in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: leaveism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “leaveism.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/leaveism. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.