In my previous job according to the overall manager in charge of everyone and in the opinion of his boss and of his boss too, there was a big problem. Although it is true that the first two managers did have bigger absence numbers than others, it was industry average. They regularly (previous two years) used to dismiss staff for absence and one of the managers even wanted it broadcast how many people had been sacked for absence in each financial year. The company used to complain very bitterly about the amount it paid out in company sick pay, but the vast bulk of disciplinaries were for people who didn't get it at all or on relatively low levels. A huge bulk of absence as measured in the totals was depression, back problems and stress. The latter two were not a surprise to me at all, when I left various friends described a few days later stress having based-jumped off a cliff.
The absence policy was extremely harsh to full time workers who had a tiny number of days off per year, but very generous to part-time employees with large blocks of time off. Each absence was treated the same irrespective of length (although long term sick was treated differently - in theory). Even if you got physically sent to A&E not long before the end of your shift it was treated as the same (examples of this).
