The Association between Job Satisfaction and Absenteeism: the Case of Manufacturing Company

This study aims to explore the relationship between job satisfaction across its dimensions and absenteeism. We investigate the research question "How does job satisfaction relate to absenteeism in the manufacturing sector?" The research goals include an examination of how working conditions satisfaction, work content satisfaction, and work atmosphere satisfaction affect absenteeism rates among employees in a company group of manufacturing sphere located in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The research methodology involves analyzing anonymized data from employees with descriptive statistics and regression analysis. Job satisfaction, namely satisfaction with working conditions, work atmosphere, and work content, was assessed by the employees themselves on the Likert scale (1-7), the level of absenteeism was the number of missed working days in 2022 due to all unplanned reasons. The final sample consisted of 371 employees. The main result is the observation that for each unit increase in satisfaction with working conditions, the expected count of days missed decreases by about 11.7%. The association between absenteeism and work content as well as with work atmosphere was proved insignificant. The study shows that enhancing working conditions is essential in reducing absenteeism which in practice is quite important for a company willing to improve employee productivity and well-being.