Background: Absence from work due to illness is one of the important problems in organizations in Serbia. The subjective experience of stress contributes to the degree of absenteeism for several reasons: the demands of the organization in relation to its employees, the low standard of living and care for existence, poor health prevention, and many others. According to European standards, subjective stress contributes to high absenteeism in organizations and to relatively significant health problems. The lack of preventive health care measures, and unclear organizational requirements that do not correspond to the capacities of employees are among the causes of this phenomenon.
Objective: The objective of the research is to determine and identify the existence of stress indicators manifested through self-evaluation of the respondents, as well as to establish the nature of the relationship between stress symptoms and general demographic indicators, personal health assessment and the existence of stressful events of the respondents. This paper presents an analysis of the results of stress indicators, as well as psychosomatic difficulties whose existence could indicate the occurrence or increase of absenteeism of employees in organizations.
Results: Significant differences between stress symptoms with respect to age, years of service, the self-evaluation of health, and recorded unpleasant events were apparent.
Conclusions: In Serbia, the problem of absenteeism, primarily sickness-related, is quite pronounced and significantly higher than in other European countries. Researching the causes of stress and the possibilities for decreasing and preventing it would help reduce adverse effects on the health, economic and psychological state of both employees and organizations.
Keywords: Work process; absenteeism; psychological stress; symptoms.