Answer: Absenteeism means being absent from work. Employees may take a leave or not report to work for a variety of reasons. Some of these may be uncontrollable factors like sickness, emergency, accidents etc.
However, employees may also take leave when they are capable to attend work. This may result out of low motivation levels and dissatisfaction with one’s work. Unscheduled leaves hurt a company the most. Absenteeism presents a huge cost to the company and thus should be monitored closely.
It is the responsibility of the Human Resource Department to communicate the attendance policy clearly to the employees. At the same time, it has to develop HR policies to raise the motivation levels of employees and decrease absenteeism due to culpable reasons. The company should take steps to engage the employees so that they enjoy their work and are absent only for genuine reasons.