Employee absenteeism: Construction of a model for international comparison of influential determinants

Employee absenteeism is a worldwide phenomenon which, due to the financial impact on a nation‟s economy, is an important subject on the international agenda. In order to provide new insights into employee absenteeism a model with a broad variety of determinants is constructed and tested for Europe as a whole and the individual countries. Based on previous studies, a wide selection of determinants was distinguished and divided into categories such as demographics, health-, household- and job characteristics. With the country comparison the designed model tested whether it also holds explanatory value for individual countries and whether differences existed in absence behaviour due to country characteristics. A dataset from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) was used to test the model. This survey provided the necessary information and is constructed as such that it can be used for international comparisons. The designed model is based upon the effects of latent variables and because of the binary aspect of the dependent variable a probit analysis is conducted. The outcome of the marginal effects method of the probit model provides evidence that the pooled model has a high degree of explanatory power. Although not all determinants showed the expected results, strong significance was found for the constructed model as a whole and the individual determinants. Regarding the test results for the individual European countries, ambiguous results were found. These differences originate from different country characteristics and hence, the model should be adjusted for the individual countries.