Introduction: Absenteeism is one of the challenging issues in managing human resources. Many social, economic and personal factors may affect sickness absence. We studied effects of some personal factors on sickness absence in a governmental organization.    

Methods: In a cross-sectional study, we invited all of white collar workers of one governmental organization to participate in this study. Data regarding personal factors collected for volunteers and combined with long-term sickness absence data which extracted from sickness absence certification files.  

Results: A total of 527 workers, including 408 males and 119 females participated in our study. Of these 527 participants, 70 (13.3%) had a history of long-term sickness absence in the past three years. Sickness absence spells were significantly associated with female sex, smoking, less than three person kinship responsibility, chronic disease and poor self-rated general health, in regression analysis. Working days lost due to sickness absence were significantly associated with female sex, smoking and chronic disease, in regression analysis.    

Conclusion: Diseases are not the sole cause of sickness absence and other personal factors may play a significant role on making a decision to withdraw from the workplace.