The impact of work hours discrepancy on employee absence

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the discrepancy between actual and desired weekly hours of work on employee absence.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors used a nationally representative, employer-employee matched sample of over 39,000 employees and applied zero-inflated Poisson regressions.

Findings

Work hours discrepancy has a significant impact on employee absence. This impact is different among employees who want to work more hours and those who want to work fewer hours.

Originality/value

This study provides new insights into the determinants of employee absence and the implications of constraining employees in their choice of weekly hours of work.

Citation

Wang, J. and Reid, F. (2015), "The impact of work hours discrepancy on employee absence", International Journal of Manpower, Vol. 36 No. 5, pp. 668-693. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJM-05-2013-0120