Management could have been aware of more personal details that coworkers should not know. I don't think it is necessarily a black mark against the company without knowing the whole story.

Management could also communicate to concerns coworkers that the absences are excused. They could also work with the employee to notify teammates in an appropriate way.

Just allowing employees to disappear with no notice or trace is an environment where I won’t want to work.

There are obviously situations where I have to not be at work suddenly (eg, medical emergency where I don’t want to share details) but I can just send a text to a boss or corworker and have them do the rest.

If HR said they didn’t want to act to not hurt feelings that seems like there was no additional info, unless they thought that was a proper way to protect medical info (it isn’t).

Sounds like a bad place to work and seems like a negative factor for companies wanting to do well or me awesome.

You can never be to certain what other people are dealing with outside of work. Sometimes, management knows things that they are not at liberty to share.

Exactly. There are a vast number of incapacitating health related reasons that could cause a person to be absent, e.g. panic attacks, stuck in a bathroom (IBS/IBD/Chron’s), migraines, depression. The type of thing that reasonably wouldn’t be broadcasted out to the entire team.

I think it’s better to just assume nothing unless you have direct knowledge that the employee is doing something blatantly unethical like working at another job (has happened before).

I’m guessing corporate or team policies about requesting time off may have been too restrictive. Depending on the team, having people take random days off on short notice might not be all that disruptive. But hopefully management enables that for everyone, rather than just forgiving it on a case by case basis.