Perspectives in Human Resource Managment - Essay Example

150737 PERSPECTIVES IN HRM Absence means non-attendance of employees for the scheduled and expected hours of work. This could happen in variousways like, sickness absence, statutory time off, strikes or other industrial actions, holidays, special leave and personal or domestic leave and here we are concerned with absenteeism, that HRM nightmare. Absenteeism is one of the HRM perspectives and Human Resources have been continuously battling for its reduction and control in every organisation. According to one recent report, UK loses approximately 10.5bn every year due to absenteeism and 187 million working days were lost in 19991. No doubt, most of the reasons were genuine, especially concerning health and childcare. It could be anything: cold, flu, stomach ailments, food poisoning, emotional stress and personal problems resulting in headaches and migraines, jobs sans excitement resulting in backaches, childcare, family sickness, emotional difficulties, parental health, marital problems etc. Tracing absenteeism and finding solutions could be a bit complicated than expected, because some of the companies are more interested in eliminating paper work than keeping its records. Examining absenteeism, its costs, and its causes depending on its effects on economy and psychology of work has been difficult. Retaining business agility and striking a balance with absenteeism has been a tough task for Human Resources. According to Times headline, Royal Mail, highly crippled by absenteeism, begged its workers to 'come to work to win a holiday2.' "Subsequently, British Airways confessed that absenteeism was costing it around 60 million a year3". This paper also informs that "In fact, there will never be a definitive 'solution' to absenteeism. However, the issue can be managed by thinking about the demands that managers make on workers and by clarity and consistency of policy, as opposed to panics and crack-downs4". There is no instant remedy for absence, even though most of the causes remain the same over centuries with very little variance. Surprisingly the causes of absence in modern society are almost similar to those decades ago. They could be anything, economic, social, psychological, health, and situational. Absence from work is a recurring situation that has to be constantly managed to improve productivity, reduce resultant costs, and maintain a suitable corporate culture. "Absenteeism is one of the most persistent obstacles to productivity, profitability and competitiveness. It causes overtime, late deliveries, dissatisfied customers and a decline in employee morale amongst workers who are expected to cover for an absent employee" http://www.softworks-computing.com/absenteeism.html Some costs of absenteeism implicit and some are explicit. They also depend on the activity, productivity scale, size and economic and social significance of the organisation. Absence does not affect all organisations in the same way. At the same time, causes could be connected with the individual organisation, while most of them being universal and similar. "Absenteeeism affects, in domino fashion, such intangible as employee morale, discipline, and job satisfaction, which, in turn, increase labor turnover and reduce worker productivity, thereby reducing product quality and making production scheduling more difficult," Dilts et al (1985, p.21). These affects are neither direct, nor clearly visible; but their existence cannot be doubted. Finding job replacements at very short notice and taking an unsuitable and inexperienced replacement can cause employee resentment being unable to cope up with the demands of new circumstances and unfamiliar tasks. So in a way it spreads a kind of discontentment all around and when a person is on an absence spree, other workers would be apprehensive of being asked to serve as standbys. Discipline could be affected by constant absenteeism causing carelessness in replacements and other regulars, because they tend to take it as doing a favour to management. If absentee workers are reprimanded it would spread further discontent. If they are not, other employees would do the same thinking that authorities are comfortable with constant and uninformed disappearance. So whichever path management adopts, it is impossible to win. White collar employees, by being visibly absent often spread impunity amongst workers and these are HR difficulties. Absence has the capability of strangling production flow at several points ranging from poor production, late production, spurts of production and total breakdown of the manufacturing process. An uninformed and unauthorised absence of an important, trained and skilled finishing machine employee can result in the breakdown of entire process leading to no productivity outcome. Main causes of absence are considered to be lack of motivation, though cannot be taken as the only cause to inspire a policy prescription, which should be based on a more generalized and easily understood theory. It means it should be easily operative too. Most of the absence inducers could be countered with research, suggestions, counter measures, helpful laws and strategic management. But this cannot be said about the sickness absence. HRM hits a dead-end, when it comes to absence due to sickness. There are many difficulties in sickness absence. It is not easy to prove that the sickness is not serious enough to affect attendance. Also it could be anything, spells, depressions, unseen maladies and personal problems triggering off highly individualised sickness forms even though it always does not incapacitate the person from contributing to her daily work. Imagined ailments and persecution mania also can contribute to sickness absence and this is a hazy region where even professionals get baffled and grope along. Reasons could be related to particular occupations depending on the physical and mental requirements of the occupation. It becomes necessary for HR to find these compulsions and eradicate the problems as much as possible, as deftly as possible, and this does not mean that HR would be successful in every case. There are occupational problems that come with the occupation and cannot be sidelined or eradicated completely. Some of the occupational hazards always exist. Only remedy is making the particular occupation as safe as humanly possible. The direct costs of absence traditionally include sick pay combined with fringe benefits (insurance, pension, holiday etc), overtime payments for the workers who fill in the gap to smoothen out the working process and the expenses of overstaffing as part of strategy against absence. Indirect costs could be sectional shutdowns, work disruptions, reduced productivity, costs of replacing the staff leading to temporary upheavals in all sections, poor quality of work production due to being handled by unfamiliar workers, losing customers for not being able to meet deadlines and quality service, earning bad reputation for no fault of organisation, wasting of supervisory and management time looking for replacements and guiding the new people under strange and unfamiliar circumstances, frequent checking and pulling up of substitutes leading to unpleasantness, extra administration cost to control, prevent, handle absenteeism, additional cost of advertising, interviewing, recruitment, selection, and training of new replacements and adverse effects spreading amongst regular employees. These problems do not go well with the international business scene now and absence has taken priority in business organisations as one of the issues that should be tackled at the earliest. "By understanding the nature of their company's absence problem, and by developing and implementing an appropriate absence control programme managers can achieve significant productivity improvements rapidly," says Huczynski (1989, p.26). Nature of work, working environment and atmosphere too become HRM's responsibility. Sometimes, it is pointed out that sickness absences could be age related, but mostly this idea is negated. It is not rare to see lazy youngsters and dedicated older people to whom employment has become a way of life. Also sickness does not target only older people. Depending on the lifestyle people lead, it could be simply any one, and it must be agreed that mostly older people are more disciplined and reverential towards their work. Of course, HRM has to deal with practical problems like failing eyesight or a frequent lung infection like sicknesses. Again this could happen at any age, and hence, age need not be a criterion. There is another argument that married people work better than the unmarried and single. There could be some truth in this argument because a single parent has to attend to multiple numbers of duties, making it almost impossible to reach on time and dedicating wholeheartedly to work. Being plagued by many problems it could be a superhuman effort. Married people, more settled and set in their ways could be coming to work regularly and comfortable, as their lives are better organized. But it need not be always so. Single parents, single people, unmarried people have more expenses and unforeseen need for money. Hence, they could be more careful about their work. Loneliness at home could be driving them to work place to be with friends and colleagues. So, these reasons and issues need not be universal. This is once again the responsibility of HRM to find out the exact cause keeping all these research tools in mind. HRM has to calculate length of spell, subdivide sickness absence accordingly, segregate the exposed-to-risk, coding medical diagnoses, revaluing accuracy of diagnoses and their recurrence, making diagnostic grouping and reasoning it and then finding out alternatives and solutions. Frequency distribution level according to date of commencement should be calculated with the proportion of sickness in successive periods of absence. Comparisons of actual and 'expected' sickness absences are necessary. If the job comes under dangerous category, there is always a possibility that the worker must be trying to find an alternative job, or avoiding exposing himself to dangerous conditions. "For every occupation there is a process of self-selection in the sense that people do not seek to engage in it unless they consider themselves capable of meeting at least the minimum requirements. Also, they do not remain in it if opportunities arise of other employment which they consider preferable," Health in Industry (1956, p.10). Absence management will always remain one of the HRM difficulties, because some degree of staff absence for any reason could not be avoided. A dental appointment, children's sickness, demands on parents by educational institutions, waiting for domestic repairers like plumbers, electricians, carpenters etc., attending a funeral, unexpected hospitalisation of relatives and friends, and then of course, being down and ill will always happen and cannot be avoided. Women will have many more problems like maternity leave, childcare, ill health of child, resultant self sickness, prenatal and antenatal clinical demands etc. cannot be avoided and most of the managements are quite sympathetic towards such demands, not to mention law. Some absences are even given preference in the contract itself, like holiday allowances, paternity leave, taking time off in lieu, additional maternity leave, annual dental and physical check-up leaves etc. While accepting that certain level of absence is inevitable, it is difficult to foresee all the eventualities. Along with the statutory rights and responsibilities, employer has many more duties to take reasonable care and safety of employees by not exposing them into unnecessary danger or accident, pollution, chemicals and toxic inhalation that could damage their health eventually by performing any dangerous duties. "Managers have responsibilities to make sure that the service is delivered. They also have delegated responsibilities on behalf of an employing body to ensure that the staff are not put under undue stress or asked to carry workloads that are detrimental to their health. Committees and senior managers should be aware of this responsibility when planning staffing levels or work rotas," Hargreaves, (1998, p.3). HRM modifies rules and regulations so that the duties of the employer and rights of employees blend smoothly for the benefit of both the parties, keeping in mind that the employees remain unharmed by the risky employments. They also attend to the legal framework of employment legislation, especially the Employment Rights Act 1996. Sex Discrimination Act 1975, Race Relations Act, 1976 and the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act, 1992, Social Security Administration Act 1992, Access to Medical Reports Act 1988, Directives on Working Time, Part time and Atypical Workers and Parental Leave and Rights under the contract of employment etc. Organisations and culture are tricky subjects where absenteeism is concerned because people from diverse cultures demand religious holidays, or at least permission to abstain from work to celebrate festivals and this could be carried beyond the acceptable limit and while maintaining cultural flexibility, strategic management would be of use here. There are many more factors other than the highly visible, universally accepted ones, that could affect attendance of employees. According to Hargreaves et al, factors could be "Poor planning of staffing levels, unrealistic costing of staffing levels, poor design of jobs, no policy on legitimate absences, lack of health and safety standards, lack of health promotion, poor management performance/bullying culture, lack of capability and lack of management information on absence" (page 6). Today, international and national industrial scenes have undergone an unprecedented change and are continuing the process. Size of the company, structure of work group, job content and skill levels, working conditions, hours of work, rate of pay, overtime payments, sick pay schemes, quality of supervision, long-service awards, personal factors, sex, race, work ethic and financial factors all affect absence and vice versa. Financial factors include taxation levels, industrial disputes and settlements, local economic activities, because financial factors are such, that it never affects one individual, but even the distant societies, not seemingly doing so. Some other external causes that some of the studies have brought up are the journeying time to work, journey comforts, availability of transport and distance from worker's home. Personal economic conditions of the worker, even though looks unlikely is one of the paramount reasons of absence. It is impossible to be efficiently organised for a person with insufficient finance and this leads to waste of time in getting necessities at all times, as money comes and this tension, hurrying, stress could lead to absence at work place. Journey and finance have some other negative affect causing discontentment amongst workers, as stated by Mathewman (1983, p.30): "They also infer than an employee travelling by car might more easily explain his absence through breakdown while those using public transport systems would find it difficult to support their story if colleagues had successfully completed the trip". There are indications that attendance had been a historical problem and said to be as old as capitalism and have always been an argumentative field of enquiry. It is also argued that continuous absence started during difficult times, when women have to don the role of single parents working in factories and attending to their domestic duties simultaneously. "Yet, Summerfield argues, this absence was not the result of irresponsibility or shirking , but was the unsurprising consequence of the pressures of women's wartime role, compounded by managerial unwillingness to alter work schedules or provide shops on site: managers preferred to discipline absentees rather than seek out the underlying issues and manage them actively," Edwards (1993, p.6). Absence has given way to many cohesive theories like Economic Theory, Psychological Theory, Sociological Theory, Jurisprudential theory and Disability Theory. Psychological theory is considered to be the most important, and HRM should strive hard to counter problems that surface and relate to this theory. It consists of many sub-theories like Passive Withdrawal theories (Inequity Theory, Valance Theory, Met Expectations Theory, Need for Control Theory, 'I Am Not needed' Theory), Strategic Withdrawal Theory (Workload tolerance theory, Coping Behaviour Theory) etc. "In summary, psychological theories view the problem of absenteeism as a problem of individual motivation to attend work on a regular basis. The theories point out a number of variables that influence each of the above-noted aspects of behaviour and, therefore, employee job attendance," Dilts (1985, p.33). Government and HRM, while making strategic plans for countering absence, have to take into consideration the length of the working lifetime, major spells of time away from work, the length of the working week alternative working arrangements and hourly productivity and real wages etc. Today many dimensions are introduced into the problem like compulsory retirement, short-time working, part time working, flexitime, flexible retirement, etc. These have to be introduced carefully according to personalised research based on individual company's mission and needs. "The degree to which working time changes, of any type, will have employment repercussions correlates negatively with the extent to which productivity improvements among existing workers are possible, and positively labour cost reductions," according to Hart (1984, p.66). Sleep and brain restitutions, sleep deprivation bringing psychological performance detriments can create many behavioural problems to employees. "Many performance functions deteriorate under conditions of continuous work and sleep loss, and the degree of these decrements depends mainly on characteristics of the task and the motivation of the person at work," says, Folkard (1985, p.75). Naturally it becomes the task of HRM to introduce counter measures to abolish prolonged work spells and sleep loss by introducing flexitime, physical exercise, etc. Employee could also be advised against taking drugs, if any, and noise reduction in his home surroundings. In modern days, human resources is expected to take care of not only the employee's time in the organisation, but also his physical and mental wellbeing, family circumstances, personal problems, environment, depression, physical inabilities etc. Taking this into consideration has made organisations more and more individual-oriented, rather than the earlier collective approach. Now the worker is assessed and considered as an individual and the days when he was considered as part of work force and union have vanished. Human Resources would be well advised if they assess each worker's reasons and compulsions for absence and act accordingly. With the present social individualistic approach, the view of society as an en mass existence does not prevail any more. Instead, every individual has diverse problems of his own, with his individualist approach towards life, and these problems and issues should be tackled in a highly individualistic way. Organisations have adapted this approach when they opted for human resources management and workers and their problems should be dealt with likewise. BIBLIOGRAPHY: 1. Dilts, David A., Clarence R. Deitsch and Robert J. Paul (1985), Getting Absent Workers Back on the job, Quorum Books, London. 2. Edwards, Paul and Whitston, Colin (1993), Attending to Work, Business Blackwell, Oxford. 3. Folkard, Simon and Monk, Timothy H. (1985), Hours of Work, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester. 4. Huczynski, Andrzej A. and Fitzpatrick, Michael J. (1989), Managing Employee Absence for a Competitive Edge, Pitman, London. 5. Hargreaves, Sarah, Christina Morton and gill Taylor (1998), Managing Absence, Russell House Publishing, Dorset. 6. Health in Industry, (1956), London Transport Executive, Butterworth & Co., London. 7. Hart, R.A. (1984), Shorter Working Time, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Paris. 8. Matthewman, Jim (1983), Controlling Absenteeism, Junction Books, London. ONLINE SOURCES: 1. http://www.flexibility.co.uk/flexwork/general/absenteeism.htm 2. http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/about/warwickmagazine05/absenteeism University of Warwick research. 3. Read More