Absenteeism, Presenteeism, and Workplace Climate: A Taxonomy of Employee Attendance Behaviors

Abstract

Absenteeism and presenteeism are workplace behaviors that both impose costs upon employers. Research on presenteeism has surged in recent years and has accelerated with the growing realization that the costs of presenteeism are much larger than the costs of absenteeism. Where much of the knowledge about absenteeism and presenteeism has been acquired through separate strands of research, at this point further progress calls for more theoretical analysis focused on the joint determination of absence and presence decisions. Moreover, there remains a need to consider the context in which workers make attendance decisions. This paper develops a four way typology of attendance climates that provides a conceptual framework for understanding employee attendance outcomes. Each attendance climate defines a different context that entails different motivations for workers such that different types of absence and presence can be identified. The analysis demonstrates that absenteeism and presenteeism rates are endogenously determined within a workgroup and the expected rates of absenteeism and presenteeism differ systematically across attendance climates. The paper concludes with a discussion of its implications for both researchers and human resource managers.