The impact of work hours discrepancy on employee absence

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.