Sickness absenteeism — legal and economic aspects

While illness and work-inability random events, independent from the human will, the sickness absence it a result of conscious decisions. Employees vary in its use. The subject of interest in the article is sickness absenteeism, so the phenomenon of the overuse of sickness leaves, that is medically unjustified. Basing on the literature and results of previous research the essence of this problem have been presented, as well as its types and determinants. Sickness absence, like any other social privilege, is a field of potential abuse. Excessive use of sick leaves may take two forms: moral hazard or welfare fraud. Intensity of these problems depends on the number of factors within individual characteristics of worker, features of working environment, and a broad social and institutional context. We investigated those factors and identified dozen of them.

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