Employee’s understanding of workplace absenteeism and the investigation of stress as a contributing factor

Absenteeism is a problem that has plagued organisations for many years, unfortunately organisations are still struggling to deal with this costly problem. Much of previous research carried out on absenteeism has focussed on the variables that cause an employee to attend or not attend work such as motivation and job satisfaction. Other research on absenteeism has focused on the issue from an organisation and employer viewpoint. Stress as a contributing factor to workplace absenteeism has risen in the past number of years with the recession having a big impact on this. With recent redundancies in many organisations and recruitment bans in others, those left in their roles are finding their workload increasing which is contributing to the anxiety and stress employees are experiencing. In this study four key variables were identified to help measure and explore employees understanding of absenteeism and to investigate if stress is a contributing factor. Surveys were distributed at random in which respondents were asked a series of questions relating to the key variables. The study has given an insight into the understanding employees have on the issue of absenteeism and has provided an understanding of the relationship between stress and absenteeism. Results identified show that the majority of respondents have a certain understanding of the effect absenteeism has on an organisation. However, some of the most interesting findings relate to an employee’s knowledge in relation to policies and procedures that may be present in their organisation, with the majority of employees unaware of any policies or procedures that are in place thus, contributing to the seriousness of the problem. Findings have also shown that employees rate their daily workload as stressful and feel stressed on a regular basis. Further findings showed that employees believe that stress is a factor to absenteeism in their organisation