Absenteeism

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Absenteeism is a habitual pattern of absence from a duty or obligation without good reason. Generally, absenteeism refers to unplanned absences. [1] Absenteeism has been viewed as an indicator of poor individual performance, as well as a breach of an implicit contract between employee and employer. It is seen as a management problem, and framed in economic or quasi-economic terms. More recent scholarship seeks to understand absenteeism as an indicator of psychological, medical, or social adjustment to work.

Contents

Workplace

High absenteeism in the workplace may be indicative of poor morale, but absences can also be caused by workplace hazards or sick building syndrome. Measurements such as the Bradford factor, a measurement tool to analyze absenteeism which believes short, unplanned absences effect the work group more than long term absences, do not distinguish between absence for genuine illness reasons and absence for non-illness related reasons. In 2013, the UK CIPD estimated that the average worker had 7.6 absent days per year and which cost employers £595 per employee annually. [2] Measurement methods are not exact and all encompassing, resulting in skewed results depending on variables being observed. [3] As a result, employees can feel obliged to come to work while ill, and transmit communicable diseases to their co-workers. This leads to even greater absenteeism and reduced productivity among other workers.

Work forces often excuse absenteeism caused by medical reasons if the employee provides supporting documentation from their medical practitioner. In Poland, if employees themselves, or anyone under their care including children and elders, falls ill, sick leave can be applied. [3]

The psychological model that discusses this is the "withdrawal model", which assumes that absenteeism represents individual withdrawal from dissatisfying working conditions. This finds empirical support in a negative association between absence and job satisfaction, in particular, the satisfaction with the work itself. Factors attributed to absence from work can include stress, family related concerns, work culture, the employees' ability to do the job, and supervisor–subordinate relationship. [3]

Medical-based understanding of absenteeism finds support in research that links absenteeism for medical reasons with mental and behavioral disorders, diseases of the digestive system, neoplasms, and diseases of the genitourinary system. This excludes pregnancy, childbirth, and puerperium. The cost of this, in euros, is 7.43 billion per year for men and 9.66 billion for women (6.7 billion euro after taking out pregnancy, childbirth, and puerperium.) [3] Research shows that over one trillion dollars are lost annually due to productivity shortages as a result of medical-related absenteeism. The line between psychological and medical causation is blurry, given that there are positive links between both work stress and depression, and absenteeism. Depressive tendencies may lie behind some of the absence ascribed to poor physical health, as with adoption of a "culturally approved sick role". This places the adjective "sickness" before the word "absence", and carries a burden of more proof than is usually offered.

Evidence indicates that absence is generally viewed as "mildly deviant workplace behavior." For example, people tend to hold negative stereotypes of absentees, under report their own absenteeism, and believe their own attendance record is better than that of their peers. Negative attributions about absence then bring about three outcomes: the behavior is open to social control, sensitive to social context, and is a potential source of workplace conflict.

One tactic companies use to combat unplanned absences is the notion of paying back unused sick time. [1] Moreover, high levels of work social capital can reduce absenteeism. [4] While a distinction can be made between types of work social capital (bounding, bridging, direct-leader-linking, and top-level-linking), relationships with the immediate leader and the top management (direct-leader-linking and top-level-linking WSC) are most important to reduce employees’ absenteeism. [4]

Pandemic absenteeism

Absence due to illness and disability has ballooned since the pandemic. Healthier workplaces have lower absence rates. Paid leave reduces absence. [5] [6]

Management

Absenteeism is a habitual pattern correlated with emotional labor and personal reasoning, but there are resolutions to finding ways to alleviate the cause. Kelley, et al. (2016) says stress accounts for twelve percent of absenteeism in the workplace a year, which is a matter in which the company needs to stay in communication with the employee and work towards a solution. A great example of finding progress in absence management is forming an employee assistantship program (EAP), which is "a strategy to help workers deal with issues outside of work that employees bring to the workplace" (Quinley, 2003). This not only involves stress, but other mental health factors that employees deem worthy of attention.

Planned vs unplanned

Planned absences from work include scheduled time off, retirement, and sabbaticals. These absences cause little to no disruption to work spaces because of the time given to work around the absence. [1]

Unplanned absence from work is defined as leave that is not planned or predictable. It includes sick time off, injured time off, special circumstances, and absence without permission. [1] Unplanned absences indicate an important factor of the health of the workplace, including employee satisfaction and commitment. [1]

Sources

Bullying

Nearly every workplace that has a bully in charge will have elevated staff turnover and absenteeism. [7]

Narcissism and psychopathy

According to Thomas, there tends to be a higher level of stress with people who work or interact with a narcissist, which in turn increases absenteeism and staff turnover. [8] Boddy finds the same dynamic where there is a corporate psychopath in the organization. [9]

In school

While occasional school absenteeism may not be problematic, excessive absenteeism has shown to have a negative impact. Students with poor attendance records are found to be at a disadvantage both academically and socially. Compared to their peers, these students are more at risk of academic under-performance and early school leaving. They are also at risk of having more restricted opportunities in terms of further education and employment, and are likely to experience social and emotional problems in adulthood. [10] Missing school can be a habit-forming behavior and can be challenging to deal with despite growing awareness of the causes of absenteeism.

Research evidence suggests that early interventions are six times more likely to be successful than those after students' non-attendance has reached the persistent stage. [11] Equally, there is normally one initial reason, referred to as "the trigger point", for the students' non-attendance. By the time students' absences have reached the persistent stage, there are at least several more reasons used to justify the action.

There are positive and negative reinforcements regarding student absenteeism. A positive reinforcement meaning that the student will receive either more attention from their parent or guardian, or receive tangible benefits from not going to school. A negative reinforcement meaning that the student is avoiding school. Dube and Orpinas conducted a study by surveying 99 upper-elementary and middle schools, targeting students with attendance problems. Three major profiles were identified from these students. Dube and Orpinas found that 17.2 percent missed school to avoid fear, anxiety problems, or escape from social or evaluative situations; 60.6 percent missed school to gain parental attention or tangible benefits; and 22.2 percent had no profile. [12] All three groups significantly differed in mean scores for behavioral difficulties. Children who fit within multiple profiles had the highest level of behavioral problems, and children in the no-profile group had the lowest. Children with multiple profiles had higher mean scores on frequency of victimization and total number of traumatic or stressful events than did those in the other groups.

Although there are many theories to treating absenteeism, there is no universal treatment. There is however, a step by step process identified by Evie Bald, to manage absenteeism. This process includes identifying chronic absenteeism, identifying the reasoning behind the absences, work with families to address issues, and offer positive reinforcements if necessary. [13]

See also

Related Research Articles

In organizational behavior and industrial and organizational psychology, organizational commitment is an individual's psychological attachment to the organization. Organizational scientists have also developed many nuanced definitions of organizational commitment, and numerous scales to measure them. Exemplary of this work is Meyer and Allen's model of commitment, which was developed to integrate numerous definitions of commitment that had been proliferated in the literature. Meyer and Allen's model has also been critiqued because the model is not consistent with empirical findings. It may also not be fully applicable in domains such as customer behavior. There has also been debate surrounding what Meyers and Allen's model was trying to achieve.

Stress management consists of a wide spectrum of techniques and psychotherapies aimed at controlling a person's level of stress, especially chronic stress, usually for the purpose of improving everyday functioning. Stress produces numerous physical and mental symptoms which vary according to each individual's situational factors. These can include a decline in physical health, such as headaches, chest pain, fatigue, and sleep problems, as well as depression. The process of stress management is named as one of the keys to a happy and successful life in modern society. Life often delivers numerous demands that can be difficult to handle, but stress management provides a number of ways to manage anxiety and maintain overall well-being.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Job satisfaction</span> Attitude of a person towards work

Job satisfaction, employee satisfaction or work satisfaction is a measure of workers' contentment with their job, whether they like the job or individual aspects or facets of jobs, such as nature of work or supervision. Job satisfaction can be measured in cognitive (evaluative), affective, and behavioral components. Researchers have also noted that job satisfaction measures vary in the extent to which they measure feelings about the job. or cognitions about the job.

School refusal is a child-motivated refusal to attend school or difficulty remaining in class for the full day. Child-motivated absenteeism occurs autonomously, by the volition of the child. This behavior is differentiated from non-child-motivated absences in which parents withdraw children from school or keep them home for circumstances such as homelessness. School refusal is characterized by avoidance and/or emotional distress at the time of attending school.

An employee assistance program in the United States generally offers free and confidential assessments, short-term counseling, referrals, and follow-up services for employees. EAP counselors may also work in a consultative role with managers and supervisors to address employee and organizational challenges and needs. Many corporations, academic institution and/or government agencies are active in helping organizations prevent and cope with workplace violence, trauma, and other emergency response situations. There is a variety of support programs offered for employees. Even though EAPs are mainly aimed at work-related issues, there are a variety of programs that can assist with problems outside of the workplace. EAPs have grown in popularity over the years.

Presenteeism or working while sick is the act or culture of employees continuing to work as a performative measure, despite having reduced productivity levels or negative consequences. Reduced productivity during presenteeism is often due to illness, injury, exhaustion, or other conditions, but presenteeism can also describe working while contagiously sick, which has the added risk of creating a workplace epidemic.

Workplace bullying is a persistent pattern of mistreatment from others in the workplace that causes either physical or emotional harm. It can include such tactics as verbal, nonverbal, psychological, and physical abuse, as well as humiliation. This type of workplace aggression is particularly difficult because, unlike the typical school bully, workplace bullies often operate within the established rules and policies of their organization and their society. In the majority of cases, bullying in the workplace is reported as having been done by someone who has authority over the victim. However, bullies can also be peers, and subordinates. When subordinates participate in bullying this phenomenon is known as upwards bullying. The least visible segment of workplace bullying involves upwards bullying where bullying tactics are manipulated and applied against “the boss,” usually for strategically designed outcomes.

The term eustress means "beneficial stress"—either psychological, physical, or biochemical/radiological (hormesis).

In human resources, turnover refers to employees who leave an organization. The turnover rate is the percentage of the total workforce who leave over a certain period. Organizations and wider industries may measure their turnover rate during a fiscal or calendar year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Affective events theory</span> Psychological model

Affective events theory (AET) is an industrial and organizational psychology model developed by organizational psychologists Howard M. Weiss and Russell Cropanzano to explain how emotions and moods influence job performance and job satisfaction. The model explains the linkages between employees' internal influences and their reactions to incidents that occur in their work environment that affect their performance, organizational commitment, and job satisfaction. The theory proposes that affective work behaviors are explained by employee mood and emotions, while cognitive-based behaviors are the best predictors of job satisfaction. The theory proposes that positive-inducing as well as negative-inducing emotional incidents at work are distinguishable and have a significant psychological impact upon workers' job satisfaction. This results in lasting internal and external affective reactions exhibited through job performance, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Occupational stress</span> Tensions related to work

Occupational stress is psychological stress related to one's job. Occupational stress refers to a chronic condition. Occupational stress can be managed by understanding what the stressful conditions at work are and taking steps to remediate those conditions. Occupational stress can occur when workers do not feel supported by supervisors or coworkers, feel as if they have little control over the work they perform, or find that their efforts on the job are incommensurate with the job's rewards. Occupational stress is a concern for both employees and employers because stressful job conditions are related to employees' emotional well-being, physical health, and job performance. The World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization conducted a study. The results showed that exposure to long working hours, operates through increased psycho-social occupational stress. It is the occupational risk factor with the largest attributable burden of disease, according to these official estimates causing an estimated 745,000 workers to die from ischemic heart disease and stroke events in 2016.

Emotions in the workplace play a large role in how an entire organization communicates within itself and to the outside world. "Events at work have real emotional impact on participants. The consequences of emotional states in the workplace, both behaviors and attitudes, have substantial significance for individuals, groups, and society". "Positive emotions in the workplace help employees obtain favorable outcomes including achievement, job enrichment and higher quality social context". "Negative emotions, such as fear, anger, stress, hostility, sadness, and guilt, however increase the predictability of workplace deviance,", and how the outside world views the organization.

Despite a large body of positive psychological research into the relationship between happiness and productivity, happiness at work has traditionally been seen as a potential by-product of positive outcomes at work, rather than a pathway to business success. Happiness in the workplace is usually dependent on the work environment. During the past two decades, maintaining a level of happiness at work has become more significant and relevant due to the intensification of work caused by economic uncertainty and increase in competition. Nowadays, happiness is viewed by a growing number of scholars and senior executives as one of the major sources of positive outcomes in the workplace. In fact, companies with higher than average employee happiness exhibit better financial performance and customer satisfaction. It is thus beneficial for companies to create and maintain positive work environments and leadership that will contribute to the happiness of their employees.

Counterproductive work behavior (CWB) is employee's behavior that goes against the legitimate interests of an organization. This behavior can harm the organization, other people within it, and other people and organizations outside it, including employers, other employees, suppliers, clients, patients and citizens. It has been proposed that a person-by-environment interaction (the relationship between a person's psychological and physical capacities and the demands placed on those capacities by the person's social and physical environment.) can be utilized to explain a variety of counterproductive behaviors. For instance, an employee who is high on trait anger is more likely to respond to a stressful incident at work with CWB.

Workplace incivility has been defined as low-intensity deviant behavior with ambiguous intent to harm the target. Uncivil behaviors are characteristically rude and discourteous, displaying a lack of regard for others. The authors hypothesize there is an "incivility spiral" in the workplace made worse by "asymmetric global interaction".

In workplaces, especially in Australia, a mental health day is where an employee takes sick leave, or where a student does not attend school for a day or longer, for reasons other than physical illness. Mental health days are believed to reduce absenteeism and presenteeism, which is a reduction in productivity or other negative consequences resulting from a pressure to work. Mental health days differ from absenteeism in that the purpose is to reset one's mental health rather than due to a nonspecific desire or feeling to skip work.

Positive psychology is defined as a method of building on what is good and what is already working instead of attempting to stimulate improvement by focusing on the weak links in an individual, a group, or in this case, a company. Implementing positive psychology in the workplace means creating an environment that is more enjoyable, productive, and values individual employees. This also means creating a work schedule that does not lead to emotional and physical distress.

Workplace health promotion is the combined efforts of employers, employees, and society to improve the mental and physical health and well-being of people at work. The term workplace health promotion denotes a comprehensive analysis and design of human and organizational work levels with the strategic aim of developing and improving health resources in an enterprise. The World Health Organization has prioritized the workplace as a setting for health promotion because of the large potential audience and influence on all spheres of a person's life. The Luxembourg Declaration provides that health and well-being of employees at work can be achieved through a combination of:

Employee morale or workspace morale is the morale of employees in workspace environment. It is proven to have a direct effect on productivity.

Narcissism in the workplace involves the impact of narcissistic employees and managers in workplace settings.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Workplace attendance and absenteeism" (PDF). The Australasian Faculty of Occupational Medicine. December 1999. Retrieved 14 December 2017.
  2. ↑ CIPD. (2017). 2016 annual survey report of absence management. Retrieved from absence-management_2016_tcm18-16360.pdf.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Genowska, Agnieszka; Fryc, Justyna; Pinkas, Jaroslaw; Jamiolkowski, Jacek; Szafraniek, Krystyna; Szpak, Andrzej; Bojar, Bojar (2017). "Social costs of loss in productivity-related absenteeism in Poland". International Journal of Occupational Medicine and Environmental Health. 30 (6): 917–932. PMID   28584315.
  4. 1 2 Pihl-Thingvad, Signe; Winter, Vera; Schelde Hansen, Michelle; Willems, Jurgen (2022-11-11). "Relationships matter: how workplace social capital affects absenteeism of public sector employees". Public Management Review. 26 (4): 1033–1060. doi:10.1080/14719037.2022.2142652. ISSN   1471-9037.
  5. ↑ Baker, Tom (19 December 2022). "Another Voice: Paid sick leave is needed now more than ever". Buffalo News. Retrieved 2023-01-26.
  6. ↑ "Opinion | Absenteeism is a problem post-pandemic, but prevention, not punishment, is the only answer". The Hamilton Spectator. 2022-12-27. ISSN   1189-9417 . Retrieved 2023-01-26.
  7. ↑ Robert Killoren (2014) The Toll of Workplace Bullying - Research Management Review, Volume 20, Number 1
  8. ↑ Thomas, D (2010), Narcissism: Behind the Mask.
  9. ↑ Boddy, CR (2011), Corporate Psychopaths: Organizational Destroyers.
  10. ↑ Thornton, M., Darmody, M., & McCoy, S. (2013). Persistent absenteeism among Irish primary school pupils. Educational Review, 65(4), 488-501. doi:10.1080/00131911.2013.768599
  11. ↑ Reid, K. (2012). The strategic management of truancy and school absenteeism: finding solutions from a national perspective. Educational Review, 64(2), 211-222. doi:10.1080/00131911.2011.598918
  12. ↑ Dube, Shanta R. and Pamela Orpinas. "Understanding Excessive School Absenteeism as School Refusal Behavior." Children & Schools, vol. 31, no. 2, Apr. 2009, pp. 87-95. EBSCOhost
  13. ↑ Blad, E. (2017). Schools Fight Back Against Chronic Absenteeism: Districts work to ensure students are in school. Education Week, 37(9), 5-8.
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