How Companies Can Reduce Absenteeism

Absenteeism has been a common problem in the workplace. No matter it is a small local fast food restaurant like Burger King or a big company like Apple, unplanned absent from employees will always happen sometimes. Some people didn't show up for work because they had to deal with some emergency situation that they didn't expect to have. Some people missed work just simply because they didn't like their job. There are a lot of reasons that why absenteeism occurs. Maybe it is not a big deal for employees to miss work for an hour or two during a day and one or two days during a year. But if an employee who was in a very important role to process a project for the company didn't come to work, then the whole project would be postponed. What if ten employees happened to miss work at the same day, how could a company keep the business running with so many employees absent?

Companies may lose a lot of money due to the employee absenteeism. Also productivity is affected by employee absenteeism. So it is very important for companies to find out ways that can reduce employee absenteeism. This is highly related to human resource management. Here are some articles that I have reviewed about absenteeism.

Minimizing Absenteeism in the Workplace: Strategies for Nurse Managers by Tonya Harter

This was the first article that I reviewed for my topic. It mainly talks about how hospitals can reduce absenteeism. First, Harter (2001) states that absenteeism has been a serious problem for hospitals; it disrupts the working environment and affects the hospital costs. Then she mentioned the causes of absenteeism such as dissatisfaction with one's job, sickness, parenting responsibilities, scheduling and other reasons.

Then Harter (2001) introduced the methods that can reduce absenteeism from four organizational frameworks. They are structural framework, human resource framework, political framework, and symbolic framework.

The structural framework concentrates on set up expectations and punishment for relative performance. The hospital can make rules and policies for employees to follow. There are three ways that the managers can use to reduce absenteeism: progressive discipline, proactive approaches, and maintaining attendance records. Progressive discipline is the different punishment the employee will receive when absenteeism occurs.

The human resource framework concentrates on personal feelings which means that the hospital should get their employees involved in some of their decision making process. Because the more involvement and satisfactory employees have toward their job, the less absenteeism will occur. I agree with that, once you realize that you are important to the organization you work for, you will try your best to maintain your attendance rate.

The political framework focuses on the authority that the managers has. One way to reduce absenteeism is to use the reward and coercive power. There're two types of programs that works very well within this framework: the positive absentee-control programs and disciplinary-control programs.

The symbolic framework focused on creating an organizational culture that against absenteeism. Every employee in the organization should be aware of that absenteeism is very unacceptable in the workplace. It will lead to bad consequences. This kind of attitude should be carried by the manager and spread all over the organization.

Overall, the methods that the author mentioned above are all very realistic, they all worth a try.

How to Reduce Absenteeism: A Comparative Analysis by Michael Markowich and Carl Silver

This article is actually a research paper written by the vice president of human resource (Mr. Markowich) at United Hospital, Inc. in Pennsylvania and the professor of statistics (Mr. Silver) at Drexel University in Pennsylvania.

At the beginning of the paper, they collected a lot of information that indicate absenteeism is becoming an increasingly important problem for organizations. Silver (1995) thought reducing absenteeism can help the organization to control cost and increase productivity. Based on the other studies, they found that there were seven popular absentee-control programs exist. The first three: bonus, buy back, and personal recognition belong to positive absentee-control programs which offer a reward or positive motivation for good attendance. Disciplinary action, no-fault, and year-end review belong to disciplinary-control programs which provide a bad consequence to poor attendance. And the last one: paid leave bank is a mixed-consequence system which combines reward and discipline.

The research mainly evaluates the comparative effectiveness of the seven absentee-control programs. They analyze the programs by set up the target population, and collect the data from the questionnaire they designed. And with the statistical method they use during the research, they found that a paid leave bank is the best program for reducing absenteeism which also means that a mix of reward and disciplinary absentee-control program would be more effective in reducing absenteeism than reward-only or disciplinary-only absentee-control program.

Some theories in this article are very similar to the theories in the first article I reviewed. Both articles talk about positive absentee-control programs and disciplinary-control programs. So obviously, these two types of programs are very useful in reducing absenteeism. But what the first article didn't mention was the combine of the two programs. It turned out to be the most effective program in the second article I reviewed.

Combatting absenteeism in the workplace by Golnaz Sadri and Mark Lewis

In the introduction, Sadri and Lewis (1995) pointed out that human capital is the most important competitive potential for an organization and absenteeism harms our competitive advantage. So reducing absenteeism becomes essential for making the organization better. This article can be divided into three major parts.

In the first part, the authors give out the definition and measurement of employee absenteeism. They thought employee absenteeism can be classified into two types: type A and type B. Type A refers to an unavoidable absence from work such as illness, military service, and jury service. Type B refers to individual choice and is avoidable.

In the second part, Sadri and Lewis (1995) examine the facts that cause absenteeism. Based on the other literature, they found that when employees are physically able to come attend work, their motivation to go to work is the key fact that will influence absenteeism. And the motivation to go to work is affected by three variables. They are job involvement, organizational commitment, and