that over one trillion dollars are lost annually due to productivity shortages as a result of medical-related absenteeism. The line between psychological and medical causation is blurry, given that there are positive links between both work stress and depression, and absenteeism. Depressive tendencies may lie behind some of the absence ascribed to poor physical health, as with adoption of a "culturally approved sick role". This places the adjective "sickness" before the word "absence", and carries a burden of more proof than is usually offered. Evidence indicates that absence is generally viewed as "mildly deviant workplace behavior." For example, people tend to hold negative stereotypes of absentees, under report their own absenteeism, and believe their own attendance record is better than that of their peers. Negative attributions about absence then bring about three outcomes: the behavior is open to social control, sensitive to social context, and is a potential source of workplace conflict. One tactic companies use to combat unplanned absences is the notion of paying back unused sick time. Moreover, high levels of work social capital can reduce absenteeism. While a distinction can be made between types of work social capital (bounding, bridging, direct-leader-linking, and top-level-linking), relationships with the immediate leader and the top management (direct-leader-linking and top-level-linking WSC) are most important to reduce employees’ absenteeism. Pandemic absenteeism Absence due to illness and disability has ballooned since the pandemic. Healthier workplaces have lower absence rates. Paid leave reduces absence. Management Absenteeism is a habitual pattern correlated with emotional labor and personal reasoning, but there are resolutions to finding ways to alleviate the cause. Kelley, et al. (2016) says stress accounts for twelve percent of absenteeism in the workplace a year, which is a matter in which the company needs to stay in communication with the employee and work towards a solution. A great example of finding progress is forming an employee assistantship program (EAP), which is "a strategy to help workers deal with issues outside of work that employees bring to the workplace" (Quinley, 2003). This not only involves stress, but other mental health factors that employees deem worthy of attention. Planned vs unplanned Planned absences from work include scheduled time off, retirement, and sabbaticals. These absences cause little to no disruption to work spaces because of the time given to work around the absence. Unplanned absence from work is defined as leave that is not planned or predictable. It