The relationship between absenteeism and employer-sponsored child care

Abstract

Given the high loss of revenue due to absenteeism, exploring differentways of managing absenteeism in South African companies, such asfamily-friendly practices, has become important. Establishing onsiteemployer-sponsored child-care facilities is an example of suchpractices.4The purpose of this article is, firstly, to report on exploratory researchthat was done to examine the relationship between absenteeism andon-site employer-sponsored child care. The following dimensionsof absenteeism were examined over a period of one year: absencefrequency, absence severity, attitudinal absence and medicalabsence. The results of two companies, one with a facility and onewithout a facility, were then compared in order to establish therelationship between absenteeism and an on-site facility. Secondly,this article also reports on the relationship between demographicvariables and absenteeism.5The results indicate a significant negative relationship between onsiteemployer-sponsored child care and absenteeism. Regardingthe influence of demographical variables, significant differenceswere found with respect to absenteeism-based marital status andage, while no significant difference was found with respect toabsenteeism based on gender and race.6This article makes a specific contribution to studies on the useof on-site employer-sponsored child-care facilities for managingabsenteeism, specifically in the South African context, and also sheds new light on the influence of demographical variables onabsenteeism