As a countermeasure, an institution in healthcare has introduced so-called health-talks. Health-talks are applied in the event of frequent absences of an employee. Thereby, a discussion is held with the employee, the supervisor, and if called upon, a Human Resources consultant in order to find measures to prevent further absenteeism. This study aims to identify the influence of moderating factors such as age and professional group on the number of absence days per employee. Furthermore, the objective is to determine how employees feel about health-talks and how supervisors handle them.

Several methods were used to arrive at these results. First, an extensive literature review was conducted to identify factors influencing employee absenteeism on an individual, work-related, and organizational level. An internal document analysis was completed to determine the number of absence days of nursing employees working in the institution. In addition, a quantitative data analysis approach was applied by conducting an employee and a supervisor questionnaire. The open-ended questions of the questionnaires were evaluated qualitatively.

The findings reveal which moderating factors influence absenteeism and how absenteeism varies across particular components. Furthermore, the data indicates how employees perceive health-talks and how they might be improved. From this, recommendations could be derived in terms of preventative measures, the conduct of health-talks, and efforts for absenteeism reduction.