What is adjusted absenteeism?
Absenteeism is generally felt to understate the true cost of absenteeism for an organisation. This could be due to (i) under-reporting of sickness absence and/or (ii) the indirect costs of absenteeism e.g. absence of staff can have implications on customer satisfaction, or there maybe spillover effects because a key team member is away at a critical time thus reducing output of other team members. To account for this, absenteeism is ‘adjusted’ by a multiplier. 1.5 is a central estimate from the wellness literature [see The Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health (2007) Mental Health at Work: Developing the business case, Policy Paper 8]. This has the effect of making the effective days of sickness absenteeism greater than the actual number of days of sickness absenteeism. If you feel that you have accurate absenteeism data and there is no under-reporting or indirect costs then set the multiplier to 1.
