Absenteeism is a measure of how much time employees are unavailable for work. Most often, this means that the amount of time employees are unavailable for work that is unexpected, in other words, employees calling off work for being sick or simply not showing up for work as opposed to absences that are planned such as vacations, holidays, family leave or long-term disability. Employees with chronic absenteeism can be a drain on business productivity and thus, in certain organizations, absenteeism is an important measure to track and analyze.
The basic formula for calculating an absenteeism rate is extremely simple—divide the number of days or hours of absence within a given time period by the total number of available days or hours within the same given time period. While this sounds extremely simple, it becomes harder when computing absenteeism across...
