background Workplace absenteeism is a major economic burden for companies worldwide.
aim To evaluate to which extent the presence and intensity of various psychological complaints are associated with absenteeism.
methods Cross-sectional data (N = 2885) were collected from a healthy workforce of a large Dutch bank participating in the niped PreventionCompass program; an personalized approach for medical and psychological prevention and lifestyle intervention based on integrated risk profiling. Psychological complaints associated with depression (Kessler-10, phq-2), anxiety (Kessler-10, nesda anxiety questions), burn-out (ubos), stress (Interheart studies), serious life events (Interheart studies), low vitality (adjusted uwes) and several neurasthenia complaints (based on icd-10 neurasthenia symptoms) were measured. For all participants absenteeism data were provided by the company health service. The data were analysed using t-tests for dichotomist variables and one-way anova for plural variables.
results For all psychological disorders, which were evaluated with the above mentioned questionnaires, a significant dose-related effect on absenteeism was shown. In more than 30% of the participating employees an increased score on psychological complaints was shown and a highly increased score for depression, anxiety and/or burn-out was shown in more than 5%. The participants with a highly increased score are responsible for a significant amount of the total absenteeism.
conclusion Psychological complaints are strongly related to absenteeism. The prevalence of employees with complaints is high. The results of this study show the potential benefit of a structured risk profiling approach followed by a stepped care intervention strategy, from self-help to face-to-face psychological treatment.