Absenteeism
Encyclopedia
Absenteeism is a habitual pattern
Pattern
A pattern, from the French patron, is a type of theme of recurring events or objects, sometimes referred to as elements of a set of objects.These elements repeat in a predictable manner...

 of absence from a duty
Duty
Duty is a term that conveys a sense of moral commitment to someone or something. The moral commitment is the sort that results in action and it is not a matter of passive feeling or mere recognition...

 or obligation
Obligation
An obligation is a requirement to take some course of action, whether legal or moral. There are also obligations in other normative contexts, such as obligations of etiquette, social obligations, and possibly...

. Traditionally, absenteeism has been viewed as an indicator of poor individual performance, as well as a breach of an implicit contract between employee and employer; it was seen as a management problem, and framed in economic or quasi-economic terms. More recent scholarship seeks to understand absenteeism as an indicator of psychological, medical, or social adjustment to work.

Workplace

Frequent absence from the workplace may be indicative of poor morale or of sick building syndrome
Sick building syndrome
Sick building syndrome is a combination of ailments associated with an individual's place of work or residence. A 1984 World Health Organization report into the syndrome suggested up to 30% of new and remodeled buildings worldwide may be linked to symptoms of SBS...

. However, many employers have implemented absence policies which make no distinction between absences for genuine illness and absence for inappropriate reasons. One of these policies is the calculation of the factor, which only takes the total number and frequency of absences into account, not the kind of absence.

As a result, many employees feel obliged to come to work while ill, and transmit communicable diseases to their co-workers. This leads to even greater absenteeism and reduced productivity among other workers who try to work while ill. Work forces often excuse absenteeism caused by medical reasons if the worker supplies a doctor's note or other form of documentation. Sometimes, people choose not to show up for work and do not call in advance, which businesses may find to be unprofessional and inconsiderate. This is called a "no call" or "no show". According to Nelson & Quick (2008) people who are dissatisfied with their jobs are absent more frequently. They went on to say that the type of dissatisfaction that most often leads employees to miss work is dissatisfaction with the work itself.

The psychological model that discusses this is the "withdrawal model", which assumes that absenteeism represents individual withdrawal from dissatisfying working conditions. This finds empirical support in a negative association between absence and job satisfaction
Job satisfaction
Job satisfaction describes how content an individual is with his /her job. The happier people are within their job, the more satisfied they are said to be. Job satisfaction is not the same as motivation or aptitude, although it is clearly linked...

, especially satisfaction with the work itself.

Medical-based understanding of absenteeism find support in research that links absenteeism with smoking, problem drinking, low back pain, and migraines. Absence ascribed to medical causes is often still, at least in part, voluntary. The line between psychological and medical causation is blurry, given that there are positive links between both work stress and depression and absenteeism. Depressive tendencies may lie behind some of the absence ascribed to poor physical health, as with adoption of a "culturally approved sick role". This places the adjective "sickness" before the word "absence", and carries a burden of more proof than is usually offered.

Evidence indicates that absence is generally viewed as "mildly deviant workplace behavior". For example, people tend to hold negative stereotypes of absentees, under report their own absenteeism, and believe their own attendance record is better than that of their peers. Negative attributions about absence then bring about three outcomes: the behavior is open to social control, sensitive to social context, and is a potential source of workplace conflict
Workplace conflict
Workplace conflict is a specific type of conflict that occurs in workplaces. The conflicts that arise in workplaces may be shaped by the unique aspects of this environment, including the long hours many people spend at their workplace, the hierarchical structure of the organization, and the...

.

Thomas suggests that there tends to be a higher level of stress
Chronic stress
Chronic stress is the response to emotional pressure suffered for a prolonged period over which an individual perceives he or she has no control. It involves an endocrine system response in which occurs a release of corticosteroids...

 with people who work with or interact with a narcissist, which in turn increases absenteeism and staff turnover
Turnover (employment)
In a human resources context, turnover or staff turnover or labour turnover is the rate at which an employer gains and loses employees. Simple ways to describe it are "how long employees tend to stay" or "the rate of traffic through the revolving door." Turnover is measured for individual companies...

.

See also

  • Organizational Justice
    Organizational justice
    The term organizational justice was coined by Greenberg and is defined as an individual’s perception of and reactions to fairness in an organization. Justice or fairness refers to the idea that an action or decision is morally right, which may be defined according to ethics, religion, fairness,...

  • Presenteeism
    Presenteeism
    Presenteeism is the act of attending work while sick. A topic that is at times considered its opposite, absenteeism, has historically received extensive attention in the management sciences, but presenteeism has only recently found a place in the research literature...

  • Saint Monday
    Saint Monday
    Saint Monday is the tradition of absenteeism on a Monday. Saint Tuesday is the less common extension of this to a Tuesday.The tradition of taking Monday off has been common among craft workers since at least the seventeenth century....

  • See a man about a dog
  • E-Jei
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