Organizational factors and absenteeism or intent to leave: A comparison between young and old age workers

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to explore organizational factors which are responsible for sickness absence and intent to leave from juniors and to compare these results with those on old age workers. Design/methodology/approach: The approach taken is a quantitative analysis on a total of 5239 young age workers with a multinomial logit model. Findings: Compared to old age workers, some organizational factors (monotony, autonomy, skill variety, time pressure, working hours, tension with the public and thermal pollutions) have a strong impact on absenteeism and intent to leave of young age workers. Furthermore, the links between some of this organizational factors and absenteeism-intent to leave is mediated by job satisfaction and health at work. Practical implications We emphasize the importance of Human Resources Practices differentiated for old age and young age workers. Originality/value: The interest of the study is to examine the relations between a large set of organizational factors (including bullying, tension with the public, aggression from the public) and absenteeism or intent to leave after controlling for many variables (size of the organization, work sector, gender, age, tenure, work status, social and occupation group, and position) and to compare the results on young age workers with those on old age workers.