Individual substance abuse, perceived workplace fairness and organisational factors as predictors of absenteeism among civil servants in Oyo State

Abstract

The present paper intends to investigate individual and organisational factors (substance abuse, perceived workplace fairness, work stress, and co-worker support) that predict absenteeism among civil servants in Oyo State, Nigeria. The paper also plans to suggest ways of significantly reducing absenteeism within the Nigerian civil service, especially, amongst the government workers in Oyo State, Nigeria. The current paper adopted a quantitative research approach, as well as a cross-sectional research design. The empirical findings disclosed that substance abuse, perceived workplace fairness, work stress, and co-worker support significantly jointly and independently predict absenteeism among government workers in Oyo State, Nigeria. Similarly, this paper suggests that gender as a demographic factor significantly influence absenteeism as female government workers tend to exhibit more absence behaviour than their male counterparts; and that educational qualification positively correlates with absenteeism, in that, civil servants with lower educational qualification tend to engage in absence behaviour more than the ones with higher
educational qualification. Furthermore, this paper concluded that reducing absenteeism within the Oyo State civil service is a factor of reduced substance abuse, high level of perceived workplace fairness, reduced work stress, and increased co-worker support, workers gender and their educational qualification. This study significantly adds to the body of knowledge in terms of unlocking suitable management strategies towards achieving a reduction in substance abuse, a high level of perceived
workplace fairness, a reduction in work stress, and an increase in co-worker support, which reduces workers absenteeism, within the civil service in Nigeria, specifically amongst the civil servants in Oyo State, Nigeria. Hence, this paper highlighted the importance of individual and organisational factors (substance abuse, perceived workplace fairness, work stress, and co-worker support), and demographic variables (gender and educational qualification) on absence behaviours.