Impact Of Sickness Absenteeism Productivity At Air Mauritius Management

In general absenteeism is defined as the failure to show for work or any other habitual duty. This usually disrupts work schedules adding workloads to those who are at work which might lead to low morale among employees. Therefore, absenteeism obstructs the good functioning of production and efficient running of an organisation. Lokke A.K, Eskildsen. J and Jesen. T. W (2007) similarly reported that the traditional definition of absence is about not being physically present at the place and time the employee is expected to be.

Davey. M.M, Cummings. G, Newburn-cook. C. V, and Lo. E. A (2009) have defined absenteeism as the failure to appear to work when planned, and according to them absence is measured by frequency or amount of work days missed. The Entrepreneur (http://www.entrepreneur.com/encyclopedia) described absenteeism as "an employee's deliberate or habitual absence from work. Everybody misses a day of work now and then. But it's a problem when an employee misses too many days of work. Not showing up for work can cause serious problems when other employees have to cover for the missing worker or, worse, the work simply doesn't get done."

Another definition by Nicholson (1977, p. 237) said that "Absence, in the language of economics, is an unpredictable variation in the firm's labour supply and in labour-intensive and technologically primitive settings which can produce costly concomitant variations in output".

Furthermore, Harvey and Nicholson (1993), p. 841 recognized that absenteeism was the major cause of lost productivity in business and industry. In a similar vein, Buschak. M, Craven. C and Ledman. R (1996) stated that absenteeism is a difficulty that every organisation or business faces creating costs and productivity problems. Thus, leading to a heavier work load on the majority of employees who have shown up for work. This type of situation tends to create dissatisfaction, frustration, stress and fatigue among employees

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