Employee Absenteeism Is a Well Recognized - Myassignmenthelp.Com

Question: How To Employee Absenteeism Is A Well Recognized? Answer: Introduction In any organisation, employee absenteeism is a well-recognised problem due to fixed work schedules. Absenteeism can be defined as failure of employee to report to work as per schedule irrespective of the reason. This behaviour can be caused by several reasons such a sick leave, occupational deviance, bereavement and other situations. If absenteeism at work place increases, it affects a business in many ways. It may include global incidence, direct cost, service quality and indirect cost (Gosselin et al. 2013). This research proposal is the part of the responsibility given to me by the Head of Human Resources of International Conglomerates (IC) to conduct a research project concerning performance management. The IC proposes to identify why the level of absenteeism across their sales divisions markedly above the industry average since the last five years. The organisation operates sales teams across three sites in France, India, and Brazil. The number of employees in each team are as follows: France 55; India 123; Brazil 35. Each team is led by a regional sales manager who reports directly to the Head of Sales in each country. The first part of the proposal involves current literature review on the topic and investigates the causes of absenteeism. The rationale for investigating this topic is plethora of literature available on the absenteeism and loss of business productivity in the sales division. Research Aim and objectives A workplace is a complex environment and is affected by several problems. One of the main affecting factors is the absenteeism. Few small factors can affect absenteeism in a great way. However, the cumulative effect of these small factors have a huge impact. Therefore, the research aims to interact with the employees and the managers to identify the cause of rate of absenteeism above the industry average in three sites of the organisation that is France, India, and Brazil. It will help to identify if human resource management strategies align with the evidenced based options available in literature. Based on the data collection the researcher intends to suggest any measure to reduce absenteeism. The objectives of research are: To identifying the factors contributing to absenteeism in the target organisation To assess the impact of the problem on organisation Recommend preventive strategies to reduce absenteeism and performance management Literature review Before finalising the topic of the research, it was decided to check the feasibility of the investigation. Firstly, the availability and accessibility of the relevant data and information is checked. A quick examination of online databases and libraries indicated a presence of rich data on absenteeism. The rationale for investigating this subject is personal interest industrial relation where the topic absenteeism and its significance was explored. The impact of absenteeism can be felt directly by the organisation. It was found from the literature review that there are no underlying theories on the chosen subject. However, there are several theories explaining why an employee fails to attend the work. The available information and statistics highlights that absenteeism is the growing problem in many parts of the world. This is the area of high concern among the manager and the researchers. In UK and US the absenteeism crisis in workplace is high prevalent. The most effected with this crisis are small and medium sized enterprises and absenteeism involves both genuine and non-genuine causes (Tillett et al. 2015). Due to this absenteeism trend, the businesses in UK are losing around 7 days a year per employee. In UK, 23% of the firms report non-genuine absences. It is the primary cause of the short-term time off workmainly for the non-manual workers. Currently, the British firms are losing productivity worth of a week, which is found to have detrimental effect on their bottom lines. According to Soane et al. (2013), the cause of absence in majority of cases is due to illness and domestic reasons. The other common cause is accidents out of work and in workplace. A company sick pay scheme is the cause of absenteeism in 8% of the cases and the nature of the work and stress in 5% of the cases. Apart from the absence due to sickness, other absences are taken which are avoidable. It may include stressors in job environment, individual work ethic and characteristics, human resource management and company leadership policy. The cause of absenteeism due to relationships at workplace is found in 2% of cases and is mainly related to depression and anxiety at workplace. Therefore, it is important to know the exact cause of absenteeism and if it is avoidable (Merrill et al. 2013). Mowday et al. (2013) examined the cause of absenteeism and found that it cannot be explained in single factor. The paper explained the psychology of the employee abseteesim. There are multiple factors contributing to the absenteeism at job which includes nature of job, characteristics of employee, employees commitment, culture of the workplace, and extrinsic motivation at workplace. According to the equity and exchange theory an employee expects a reward as a fair exchange of what they have contributed to the business in terms of knowledge, skills and commitment. Therefore, rewards may be related to the extrinsic motivation such as pay and benefits and intrinsic motivation such as job satisfaction. Bhui et al. (2012) highlighted that ability to attend office, job satisfaction and work pressure together determines absenteeism. Stringent conditions in workplace may affect the ability to attend. Some may prefer not to take absent out of fear of losing the job. Mowday et al. (2013) studi ed that increased rate of absenteeism is related to management of absenteeism. It may happen due to firms not able to monitor the absence levels. Firms should be able to control the rate of absenteeism. Any reluctance at its end will reduce the pressure on the management to correct the problem. There are several negative implications of employee absenteeism. It increases unnecessary cost to productivity. The direct cost is the sick pay schemes of the company which together with other leaves and holidays may add to the companys burden. Many other indirect costs are quantifiable. The financial burden on many firms is increasing and adding to unnecessary repercussions for productivity. Replacing an absent worker with other person increases surplus of staff to maintain business productivity. There is a huge waste of managements time due to reorganisation of schedules. The shortage of staff adds burden on other working members in the organisation. It may lead to job stress and burn out among the remaining employees. If the absenteeism is proliferated, it may lead to absence mentality and acceptance of absconding behaviour (Deery et al. 2014). The set of strategies used by the human managers to reduce absenteeism include improved communication, employee commitment, discipline, return to work interview and incentives. The study executed by Kehoe and Wright (2013) showed that organisation implementing control measures to prevent absenteeism helps reduce the problem. Lack of trained supervisors, managers fails to counsel employee and control absence. If the managers have high commitment for their profession it s reflected in their behaviour which in turn have impact on labour turnover, job performance and absenteeism. High level of commitment among the employees leads to strong belief in accepting the organizations values and goals. Commitment helps the organization to exert considerable effort to retain manpower which is the main goal of human resource manager (). Most firms experiencing high rate of absenteeism is due to low level of effort given by the human resource department to eliminate absenteeism. Lack of disciplinar y practices in the organization is the other major cause of increased absenteeism (). The corrective action for human resource managers is to set minimum standards of attendance and other disciplinary control. Those firms having strategy for employee motivation in terms of innovative incentive and bonus schemes have reduced absenteeism. In some firms with low absenteeism it was found that non-financial benefits have been more effective in reducing absenteeism (Gosselin Lemyre and Corneil 2013). It can be concluded from the literature review that absenteeism is the cumulative effect of individual characteristics and organizational response to the cues. Research design and Methodology Paradigm of Enquiry The paradigm of enquiry for this research proposal is positivism research philosophy, descriptive research design and deductive research approach. Both primary and secondary data will be collected for investigating why the absenteeism rate is more than the industry average in the target organisation. Both quantitative and qualitative research paradigm will be used for this study. The research will employ survey and interview method for data collection from the participants selected using both probability and non-probability sampling method. Precautions have been taken to ensure the reliability and the validity of the research. Research Methodology The research methodology is the structure of the research, which consist of the method outline and the research onion. The methodology analyses the research philosophy, design and approach with rationale for its use in the research proposal. It also includes data collection, sampling technique, and research ethics. Research onion is used to conclude the research methodology. The different layers of the research onion act as a framework to conduct the research in the systematic manner (Keraminiyage 2013). Figure : Research Onion (Source: Keraminiyage 2013) The four types of research philosophies are pragmatism, interpretivism, positivism and realism. The realism philosophy is the longitudinal study and the data given by the participants is assumed to reflects the research findings. The Interpretivism is used to interpret the data as a respondent and is a cross-sectional study. It does not involve data testing rather data is constructed using human reasoning and perceptions. It is therefore, considered inappropriate for this research. For this study, positivism philosophy will be used which assumes that the facts already existing in the universe can be scientifically analysed. It is justified because it aligns well with the deductive process. It is justified because the empirical data collected can be used to test the existing theories (Creswell, 2013). There are two types of research approach including deductive and inductive. In deductive approach or waterfall approach, a complex data is converted into a simpler form using quantitative research paradigm. On the other hand, the inductive approach involves building of a theory or hypothesis and involves qualitative approach. Inductive approach is suitable for exploring a subject using how and why inquiries. For this research, deductive approach is used. It is appropriate for the study because a research is conducted based on the existing research and theories. The subjective data collected from the employees on absenteeism needs to be confirmed with the secondary data. Due to time constraint there is no scope of building new theory therefore inductive approach is avoided (Barratt et al. 2015). Research design The framework or plan that guides the research study, data collection and analysis is referred to research design (Kelly et l. 2014). The steps of research design is given below- (Created by author) Problem definition is the first step in the research process. If the research problem is not clearly defined the research objectives will also turn wrong thus making the entire process a big waste of time (Kelly et al. 2014). This is the critical stage and the defined problem is to establish the reason for absenteeism rate above the industry average in the target organisation X. This creates an excellent opportunity to the managers to assess the situation and rectify the problem. Without research design it is difficult to attain the research aims and objectives. Research design directs the exploration involving procedural steps. There are three types of research design, which are explanatory, exploratory and descriptive. Exploratory research is used when a research issue is to be comprehend but is not discussed anywhere in exhaustive manner. Therefore, exploratory research builds a ground for exploration. The explanatory research on the other hand helps in data collection and selection of subject. This helps in enquiring an issue in details and establishes a relationship between set of variables. However, descriptive approach is used where the research issue is well known and can be investigated using top to bottom approach and in-depth analysis (Pickard 2013). Descriptive approach is suitable for this purpose as it will help to analyse and find out as to what and how the employees are take more week offs then scheduled. Data Collection Methods The major stage of any research process is the collection of data. This step ensures obtaining the relevant information pertaining to the subject. There re two types of data used in the research project including primary and the secondary data. When data is directly collected from the respondents or the research participants it is called as primary data. On the other hand, the data collected from the journals, books, newspapers and other databases is referred as secondary data (Sarantakos 2012). In this research the primary data will be collected from the employees and managers of the three sales division of the target organisation X to know why the rate of absenteeism has exceeded the industry average. The nature of the data collected can be both qualitative and quantitative. Quantitative data is the numeric data represented by charts and graphs. Qualitative data is the descriptive data that includes themes and patterns and are non-numeric in nature (Taylor et al. 2015). This resear ch proposes the collection of both qualitative and quantitative data. It is also referred as Mix method and is used for gaining a detailed perspective on the research problem, which is the cause of increased absenteeism in recent years in the target organisation. For any research project, it is essential to have an appropriate instrument to collect the desired data. In academic research, there are multitudes of research instrument available such as interview, questionnaire, focus groups, experiments and observations (Pickard 2012). The collection of data and the instrument to be used is guided by academia and literature to give legitimacy and reliability of the research. For quantitative data collection survey questionnaire will be used. The questionnaire will be given to 54 employees randomly selected from three sales division France, Brazil and India. The questionnaire includes close-ended Likert scale response. The responses are graded as Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neutral, Agree, and Strongly Agree. The quantitative data is collected with the aim to ensure the generalisability of the data and to obtain specific response pertaining to the problem area. During the development of the questionnaire the chance of bias response and errors will be eliminated (Creswell 2013). For qualitative data collection, interview method is used. Interview will be conducted with the regional managers and the human resource managers. For this research the interview will be conducted for 40 minutes. The purpose of descriptive data is to gain broad perspective based on the employees and managerial responses. Therefore, the interview will be based open-ended questions (Pickard 2012). Data Analysis procedures/techniques Data analysis is a high-risk task as any misinterpretation of the data may result in obtaining wrong information. It may defeat the very purpose of research. Qualitative data analysis- is performed by observational analysis. The employees and managerial responses were analysed by coding the transcripts from the audio-recorded interview. Themes are developed from the transcript and is analysed with the help of literature (Creswell 2013). Quantitative data analysis- distinct responses are obtained from the likert scale questionnaire. To analyse the scattered and the diverge responses the data will be converted to frequencies and percentages using SPSS tool. In quantitative data, it is easy to derive the research outcomes using central tendency. It will help in presenting the data in the form of tables and charts to get a generalised and inferential view (Treiman 2014). Sampling Appropriate sampling method is necessary which if failed may lead to contamination of the data and reduce the overall quality of the findings. Either probability or non-probability sampling technique can be used in the research. In this research both sampling methods are used. In Simple Random Sampling Technique, which is a probability, sampling a randomised process is employed for selecting the participants. This method prevents the contamination by human interference (Thompson 2013) Convenience Sampling Technique, which is a non probability sampling the participants are selected in biased manner to obtain insightful responses on the chosen topic (Mitchell and Jolley 2012). It is used for selecting the 3 regional managers. For this research proposal a total of 60 participants are chosen involving regional (3) and human resource managers (3) and employees (54) from three sites France, Brazil and India. Ethical Issues Ethical issues are inevitable when participating in research and the researchers are accountable for their own ethical conduct. In the process of research design, ethics is an important part. It helps in planning the data collection method, requesting access to organisation and the respondents for reporting the data. All the guidelines in the Data Protection Act 1998 will be complied while conducting the research (Barratt et al. 2015). When conducting this research, precautions will be taken to ensure confidentiality and privacy of the data collected. A written consent will be given to the participants that the information shared will not be used for any commercial purposes. The research values building trust with the respondents. A potential mentor was consulted to resolve issues while developing questionnaires. Participants will be given autonomy to respond to the questions without exerting external pressure (Deterding et al. 2015). Research timeline The subsequent levels of research onion is directed by the time horizon. Crossectional examination and longitudinal research are the two types of time horizons used in research. The longitudinal timeline is not used here as it is applicable for long term studies and for managing the gagging changes in this period (Treiman 2014). Since the time accessible is constraint cross sectional time line is used as it includes studying specific event at a particular time. Therefore, the research aims to complete the survey and interview process in 8 weeks time. The total research process is intended to complete in 10 weeks of time. The timeline of the research helps on to decide upon the sequence of events that needs to be carried out in the research. 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