Monitoring, controlling and reducing absenteeism cost – a Luxottica case analysis during the Covid-19 Pandemic

Organizations are faced with a continual battle: doing whatever necessary in order to reduce costs and increase productivity. Several studies show that absenteeism is one of the greatest cost affecting businesses. With absenteeism is intended the cost related to employee’s absence, meaning all those days and working hours in which employees were supposed to be at work but for some reasons they weren’t. There are several reasons behind worker’s absence, from stress to personal and family issues, however this thesis will not focus only on the psychological reason behind the absenteeism problem. The main issues that it wants to deepen regard how firms are able to track and control absenteeism putting in place efficient absence management systems and how they are able to reduce it by developing new and innovative solutions. Moreover, even if the absence rate has always been tremendously high, companies nowadays during the covid-19 pandemic are struggling even more to try to monitor it, with the aim of avoiding further performance problem other than those brought by the pandemic. Thus, the real aim of this thesis is to show thanks to a case study of Luxottica, the company in which I have been working for the last 4 months, how the trend of absenteeism change and how this is connected to an increase in company costs. Moreover, I want to show how the cost has been strongly affected by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and how the company is putting in place solutions in order to limit its negative effects. The thesis will be started by looking at the literature review from google scholar, management journals and several surveys answered by firms on the topic both at the Italian and also at the international level. Then the topics will be deepened with the analysis of the Luxottica absenteeism trend. The focus will be on measuring the absenteeism cost in Luxottica and comparing it with financial results in order to see how strongly its impact on company performance is, giving also a taste of which are the main initiatives put in place by the company to reduce this problem (for example, change in smart working %, initiatives to foster presence at work and to protect employees while working during the pandemic period).