Absenteeism Rate
Absenteeism rate is the proportion of scheduled working time lost to unplanned absence, measured as absent days over total scheduled days for a period.
Also known as: absence rate, absenteeism meaning
Planned leave is normally excluded. Approved holiday is not absenteeism; the metric is about unplanned loss, and folding the two together produces a number that mostly tracks when people take their annual leave.
It is most useful disaggregated. An organisation-wide rate hides the pattern that matters — a single team, shift or site carrying most of it — and the aggregate figure rarely prompts any action.
Chronically high absenteeism is usually a symptom rather than a cause: scheduling that does not fit people's lives, workload, or a manager. Treating it as a discipline problem addresses the measurement rather than the reason.
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LOP (Loss of Pay)
LOP is an unpaid absence — a day an employee did not work and had no paid leave balance to cover, so the corresponding salary is deducted from that month's pay.
Sick Leave
Sick leave is paid leave for illness or medical treatment, often requiring a medical certificate beyond a set number of consecutive days.
Headcount
Headcount is the number of people employed at a point in time, counted as individuals regardless of how many hours each works.
Shift
A shift is a defined block of working hours assigned to an employee — its start and end times, breaks and grace period — against which their attendance is measured.