The Number Behind Your Absenteeism Rate Nobody in HR Is Talking About
By Dr. Debi Silber · Founder, The PBT® Institute · PBS® Researcher · Two-time TEDx Speaker
Absenteeism is one of the most tracked metrics in HR. Most organizations know their absenteeism rate, can compare it to industry benchmarks, and have implemented some version of a wellness or EAP program to address it. And yet, in most organizations, the number barely moves.
Here’s what’s missing from almost every absenteeism conversation: employees experiencing Post Betrayal Syndrome® in addition to mental and emotional symptoms, have physical symptoms — including weight changes, digestive issues, and stress-related illness — that directly increase medical leave and absenteeism.
Absenteeism isn’t a wellness problem. It’s often a trauma problem.
The standard playbook for absenteeism involves improving benefits, adding mental health resources, creating flexible work policies, and training managers to have wellbeing conversations. These are good interventions. They are not sufficient interventions however — because they don’t address the physiological reality of what happens to the human body when trust breaks.
Post Betrayal Syndrome® (PBS®) is not a mindset issue. It is a measurable, physiological response to a specific type of trauma. My original PhD research identified it as distinct from other forms of stress and burnout — with its own symptom profile, its own trajectory, and its own pathway to recovery.
| When the body experiences betrayal, it shifts into a survival response that is not resolved by a wellness app or a benefits package. It requires a specific framework to move through. |
What the physical symptoms of PBS® look like in your workforce
Physical symptoms of PBS® include sleep disruption, immune system compromise, digestive issues, chronic fatigue, and stress-related illness to name a few. These are not just likely to occur, they’re almost guaranteed after a betrayal and continue for as long as it’s unresolved-even if it happened years ago. They are also the physiological changes that drive your employees to the doctor, into leave, and eventually out the door.
Your healthcare costs, your short-term disability claims, your FMLA utilization — a meaningful portion of these numbers have Post Betrayal Syndrome® as their upstream driver. And almost no one is measuring it directly.
The PBS® Assessment: measuring what your benefits claims can’t
Our PBS® Assessment measures Post Betrayal Syndrome® and its nine symptom clusters in your workforce. It gives HR a pre-and-post measurement of where employees are — and how they’re moving through The Five Stages of Betrayal Recovery™.
HR professionals who complete our PBT® Practitioner Certification are trained to administer the PBS® assessment, interpret the results, and build a recovery pathway for their organization. This is the number behind your absenteeism rate. Now you have a way to address it.
| Learn about the PBS® Assessment and the PBT Practitioner Certification · thepbtinstitute.com |
— Dr. Debi Silber — researcher, two-time TEDx speaker with 2M+ combined views, and two-time #1 international bestselling author — is the founder of The PBT® Institute, the world’s leading organization devoted to betrayal recovery research, education, and transformation, and the researcher behind Post Betrayal Syndrome®. She hosts From Betrayal to Breakthrough, ranked in the top 1.5% of podcasts globally.