Sickness Absenteeism Levels Of A Certain Company --Report代写范文

Report代写范文:“Sickness Absenteeism Levels Of A Certain Company”，这篇论文主要描述的是员工工作缺勤是现代企业管理中比较常见的问题，本文认为员工的出勤状况主要受到了员工的综合能力、员工所处的工作、员工的工作动机这三点的影响，文中建立起一个因对工作不满而引起缺勤旷工现象的模型，认为缺勤的原因更多的能够表现出员工对于工作的满意度，并且女性出现这种现象的几率要大于男性。

1. Employee Satisfaction levels in association with sickness/absenteeism levels. One of the first models to examine the relationship between employee satisfaction levels and sickness and absenteeism levels on a large scale was the work of Steers and Rhodes (1978, p. 31). This study used a review of over a hundred previous studies to argue that employee attendance levels were driven by two main factors: the ability of the employee to attend work and their motivation to attend work. Whilst the ability of the employee to work was seen as being largely out of the control of employers, the motivation to come to work was shown to be influenced by the employee's level of satisfaction with their working situation, as well as various other internal and external pressures to attend work. The resulting model demonstrated that absenteeism was note solely caused by job dissatisfaction, with various other factors contributing to it, but it did provide evidence that satisfaction levels were strongly related to absenteeism, as well as levels of employee turnover. This model, and the hypothesised relationships, were later examined by Watson (1981, p. 385), who demonstrated that it was actually a combination of employee satisfaction levels, various personal characteristics, and the nature of the job that actually determined levels of absence. This helped explain why women were at the time more absence prone than men, due to their different personal characteristics and job types.

Another useful model which makes a valuable contribution to the debate around the links between satisfaction and absenteeism is the work of Nicholson (1977, p. 231). This piece argued that the nature of absence could be explained conceptually using the 'A-B Continuum'. This continuum measures the extent to which individuals are able to control their absence from work. An 'A' absence event is one where the employee has no choice, such as being in a car crash, whereas a 'B' event is one where the employee has a free choice, such as claiming to be sick whilst hung over. The results of this study indicated that the likelihood of people being absent due to B type events was positively related to their motivation to attend work. This provides conceptual support for the satisfaction - absence connection claimed by Steers and Rhodes (1978, p. 31), which is an important step given that Steers and Rhodes' (1978, p. 31) work did not include significant amounts of empirical or conceptual work of its own.

In addition to this, a more recent study by Schaufeli et al (2009, p. 893) has provided support for a similar link between job satisfaction levels and involuntary 'A' type absence events. This study used structural equation modelling analysis to demonstrate that factors which contributed to low satisfaction levels and employee burnout, such as work overload, excessive emotional demands, and a lack of autonomy, were valid predictors of employee sickness duration and frequency, with both duration and frequency being measured against involuntary absences due to serious medical conditions. Conversely, employee engagement boosted satisfaction levels and reduced the level of involuntary absence amongst employees (Schaufeli et al, 2009, p. 893).

2. Cost of sickness/absenteeism

One of the most comprehensive studies on sickness and absenteeism was commissioned in 2008 by the Department of Health and the Department for Work and Pensions in the UK (Woolen, 2009, p. 13). The study was carried out by PwC, one of the 'Big Four' accounting firms, and aimed to determine the return on investment that firms gained from promoting wellness programmes in order to reduce absence. The results of the study indicated that a theoretical company with 1,000 employees with an average weekly wage of ￡400, which is below the UK national average, would incur total direct costs of absence in a year of ￡1,664,000 based on an absence rate of just 8%. It should be noted that this study is likely to underestimate the amount, as it only considers the direct costs, with the indirect costs, in terms of lost productivity and moral, being estimated to be at least double the direct cost (Woolen, 2009, p. 13).

Another important study by Management Services (2004a, p. 7) investigated the total cost in terms of management time needed to deal with workplace conflict management, including issues around employees who were off sick and had to be covered for. The results of the study indicated that an average employer would lose around 450 days of management time per year, equivalent to two full time managers, dealing with workplace conflict. Whilst this cannot all be attributed to conflict associated with sickness and absence, it does indicate an extent of the scale of the indirect costs incurred by employers. The survey also showed that when unresolved conflicts began causing employee absence levels, they also began causing a lower rate of productivity, and higher than expected turnover rate, implying that absenteeism is something that needs to be addressed as an urgent symptom of other potential consequences of poor satisfaction levels (Management Services, 2004a, p. 7).

However, another interesting piece of research indicates that small and medium sized businesses in the UK are largely unaware of the direct cost of sickness and absence to their business. The research indicates that almost 80% of small and medium business owners in the UK have never attempted to calculate the cost of absence in their company, either on an employee level or an organisation wide level. Whilst this does not offer significant useful information from the point of view of this dissertation, Management Services (2004b, p. 5) argues that the overall figures indicate that around 70% of the total cost of absence tends to be due to long term sickness, with around two million employees being out of work "for at least six months at any time due to sickness or disability". This indicates that whilst the cost of absence discussed in the studies above appears to be high, the majority of any absence is due to genuine long term illnesses. Even in light of Schaufeli et al's (2009, p. 893) evidence that satisfaction levels help to predict genuine illness levels, this implies that satisfaction levels are unlikely to have a major impact on overall sickness costs, due to the prevalence of long term illnesses which are likely to be due to factors other than satisfaction.

3. Sickness/absenteeism cultures

Attempts to understand the extent to which a sickness or absentee culture may play a role in promoting absence levels are limited by the fact that most evidence around the existence of said cultures in highly anecdotal. However, Brooke's (1986, p. 354) extension of Steers and Rhodes' (1978, p. 31) model of employee attendance does provide some empirical evidence for the impact of culture on sickness and absenteeism levels. This model indicates that the link between satisfaction and absenteeism is that satisfaction acts to mediate behaviour, specifically the tendency of a worker to behave in an absentee manner. At the same time, the behaviour of the employee is also strongly determined and mediated by various cultural norms. This implies that, if a workplace develops a culture which is amenable to absenteeism, then employees in that company are more likely to see low satisfaction levels as an excuse to take absences when they are not wholly necessary.

The potential for such a culture to exist in the UK is demonstrated in an article by Paton (2005, p. 5) which discussed the results of a sickness absence survey carried out amongst UK employees. This survey indicated that 22% of workers admitted that they took sick leave when they could actually have been well enough to have gone to work if they had needed to. In addition to this, 40% of employees claimed that they would be less likely to take sick days if they wouldn't be paid for those days. This indicates that some cultural norms in the UK may be supportive of absentee behaviour. However, 58% of respondents to the same survey claimed that they were concerned by the level of absence in their organisation (Paton, 2005, p. 5), which implies that the existence of such a culture is limited, and still not supported by a majority of employees.

4. Motivation and Morality

It is important to consider both motivation and morality when attempting to understand the cause of sickness and absenteeism in the company. This is because motivation and morality both play a key role in influencing the utility maximisation decision of employees which, under conventional micro economic theory, will be the main driver of their ultimate behaviour (Chelius, 1981, p. 409). A more detailed understanding of this can be found by applying Leibenstein's (1976, p. 35) model of individual choice. This model implies that the choices that individuals make regarding their effort position are based on two different kinds of compromise. The first is the internal moral compromise between the desire to comply with accepted standards of behaviour, and the desire to behaviour in an irresponsible and unconstrained manner. The second compromise is the motivational compromise between the risk and potential punishment for being caught or viewed in a negative light, and the reward of being able to avoid work for a day. The actual behaviour of each individual will depend on their unique moral and motivation perspective, and responses to their internal and external pressures to behave in a certain manner (Tomer, 1981, p. 351).

In addition to the individual rationalisation of these positions, it is important to recognise that the two positions can themselves be influenced by pressure on the other. In particular, the imposition of punishments or rewards for behaviour such as absenteeism can create a moral dilemma that overrides existing moral rules (Bell and Hughes-Jones, 2008, p. 503). For example, if employees are promised rewards for improving their attendance, these rewards may override their moral imperative to work. They may begin to see good attendance records as a high level of performance, rather than as a minimum standard to achieve. This in turn can reduce their feelings of moral compulsion to attend work, and replace them with the motivational value they place on the reward offered. If this reward is not seen as strong enough, it may actually serve to reduce the level of attendance. In addition to this, Lewis (1997, p. 134) demonstrated that managers need to be cautious when attempting to use motivational tools, as perceptions of managerial ethics matter to employees. As such, managers who use motivational tools in a way that is not perceived as fair by employees can damage employees' feelings of moral obligation towards the organisation, again harming attendance levels.

5. Other important theories and theorists in the area

One of the other significant theories in this area is social influence theory, which argues that absence related norms in a work environment are strongly driven by social norms and the social identity of the employee. This is examined by Bamberger and Biron, 2007, p. 176) who demonstrated "that referent group norms significantly explain excessive absence behaviour, even when taking into account the absence norms associated with the formal organizational units within which these referent groups are often nested". This implies that the strength of the referent group norms to which each employee are subjected will have a significant impact on the level of absenteeism displayed by that employee. However, they also found that "permissive referent group norms are likely to have a greater impact on the probability of target excessive absence when the target has a more conformist disposition" (Bamberger and Biron, 2007, p. 176), which in turn indicates that the level of absenteeism is driven by the relationship between the group norms and the individual disposition, and potentially satisfaction level.

Another important consideration is the impact of the processes of discipline that act in any given society. This is important because research by Haunschild (2003, p. 46) shows that health management and absence reduction activities fit into the processes of social discipline as analysed by Foucault (1975, p. 57). Specifically, the analysis indicates that any attempt by managers to reduce absence levels will be seen in the light of its disciplinary implications. For example, if a manager makes it known that excessive absenteeism may be punished by not being paid for the absentee day, the employee may choose to come to work purely to avoid this punishment. In this case, they may choose to be at work, but will not devote more than minimal effort to their assigned tasks and are unlikely to improve productivity. This process of being in work but not displaying full mental commitment may cause other employees to be resentful, and could drive conflict, potentially having even greater negative consequences that the absence would have (Haunschild, 2003, p. 46).

Indeed, theoretical work by Analoui and Kakabadse (1983, p. 46) indicates that sickness and absenteeism should not be seen in isolation. Instead, they should be seen as part of the overall level of conflict at work, particularly behavioural expressions of said conflict. Whilst the visible forms of said conflict, including absenteeism but also industrial action and employee turnover, tend to be widely studied, the less visible forms such as sabotage, employee theft and general disruptive behaviour tend to be ignored. As discussed above, this is unwise as any attempt to clamp down on one facet of conflict related behaviour such as absenteeism is likely to spill over into other forms such as turnover and disruptive behaviour. On this basis, Analoui and Kakabadse (1983, p. 46) claim that sickness and absenteeism can only be truly understood through a strong of workplace conflict, and the range of behavioural expressions that this may trigger. By developing a better understanding of these expressions, academics and practitioners will be better able to identify specific symptoms of conflict, and address the symptoms by resolving the underlying conflict, rather than simply treating the narrow symptoms and failing to resolve the root cause.

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