ABSENTEEISM DEVIANT BEHAVIOUR IN EMPLOYEES
Demands on the personal front have changed
Demands on the work front have increased.
There is an increase in pressure on employees to deliver their best on both fronts which is leading to deviant behaviors or what may be termed as Dark Side of Organizational Behaviors.
The needs of an employee were categorized into five basic requirements (Maslows hierarchy). But the scenario is complex than ever before. There are multiple variables that contribute to employee behavior. Some of these behaviors results in employees indulging in negative behaviors that lead to consequences that may harm employees that form organizations or organizations themselves. The survey also revealed that only 33 of absenteeism is due to personal illness. The rest 66 are attributed to family issues (22), personal needs (18), entitlement (13) and stress (13). Dark side behaviors are motivated to a certain extent (Griffin, c.01). The employees know that there can be negative outcomes of their behaviors, yet proceed to do the same. That is what makes the nature of such behaviors devious.
The organizations may have many systems in place to control such behaviors but some of these behaviors harm other employees and the situation spins out of control. For instance, violent behavior or sexual harassment is unacceptable. These acts cause the morale of the company to decrease considerably and hence lead to low productivity and reduced loyalty. These are behaviors that need to be controlled, minimized or eliminated altogether (OLeary-Kelly, Griffin Glew, 1996).
Morale is defined as the pervasive emotional or mental condition of employees with respect to cheerfulness, confidence, zeal, et al in their relationship with their employer and their work (Websters edition 12). With respect to absenteeism, there seems to be a direct correlation between the morale of a work force and the degree of absenteeism present in an organization. Measuring morale can be very difficult since the associated costs are not hard costs and are often hard to track and quantify. According to 2003 CCH survey, organizations with poor to fair morale set aside 5.3 of their budget to cover the cost of absent workers (CCH survey, 2003).
The resulting outcome of such behaviors can harm the reputation of the organization and the loss of goodwill. The individual behavior, in the long run, can affect team behavior as well. Absenteeism can be contagious and many members of the team may opt for it. For those who are sincere and work for the organization, it may seem unfair that a few members of the team adopt to absenteeism while they have to carry off the load of work for the entire team on their shoulders. Such team players expect to be compensated more or allow themselves to sink into lower morale in turn affecting the organization at large. Dark side behaviors are primarily of two types (Griffin, C 1)
Behaviors that are injurious to human welfare
Behaviors that are injurious to organizational welfare
Absenteeism leads to both these consequences and a few other that may be difficult to quantify or measure. The effort in this case is to evaluate specific ways in which absenteeism affects organizational effectiveness and employee efficiency.
ABSENTEEISM IMPLICATION ON ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTICVENESS
The issue of absenteeism and unscheduled leave has always been of importance to businesses. Recently there has been more awareness of the costs of absenteeism and employers are beginning to assess its true impact on every aspect of their business. As they do a better job of tracking absenteeism employers are beginning to realize how much they are actually spending on it, and are often surprised at the actual figures when they are all added up. While scheduled time off for employee vacations is an inevitable cost of doing business, employers cant escape the salary costs of unscheduled absenteeism.
Absenteeism results in actual costs to the organization. Along with absenteeism, there are hidden costs of lost productivity, training replacement workers, et al (Griffin, OLeary). The cost of absenteeism is 660 per person and the rate of absenteeism is at 2.3 and growing (CCH absence survey).
In the effort to curb absenteeism organizations have begun finding a discernable pattern in unscheduled absences, with 37 percent of organizations reporting the most noticeable pattern is people calling in sick on Mondays and Fridays, followed by 17 percent recognizing the most noticeable pattern occurring around holidays such as Christmas or the Fourth of July and 13 percent reporting their most noticeable pattern of unplanned absences occurs during flu and hay fever seasons (CCH Survey). This goes to show that employees are going out of their way to make sure that they are not noticed for their deviant behavior.
Absenteeism having taken a new turn is increasingly adorning the form of what has come to called Presenteeism. It is a term used by human resource professionals to describe circumstances in which employees come to work even though they are ill, posing potential problems of contagion and lower productivity. The current tight job market forces employees to be careful about the leaves that they take and hence have begun to display new patterns of absenteeism (klimonski, kafnner, 2002). When employees go to work sick they risk infecting their co-workers and will most likely not be as effective or productive in their work. The drag on the bottom line and overall productivity of the workplace can be subtle and hard to track effectively, but has now been acknowledged as a legitimate factor in assessing costs relating to morale and absenteeism. The cost is not directly in lost workdays, but indirectly in paying for more inefficient workdays and a potential for exponential multiplication of this cost by greater numbers of employees being affected by ill health and lost productivity.
Thirty-eight percent of employers reported that presenteeism is a problem in their organizations. Of significant concern is that of the employers who said presenteeism is a problem, 87 percent report that sick employees who show up to work are suffering from short-term illnesses such as cold and flu, which can be easily spread. The cost of presenteeism may be hidden, but it is extremely high, upward spiral begins with lost productivity and climbs from there with increased safety and quality risks, and of course the risk of infecting others. Those people then also either miss work, or come to work sick where they are a risk to others and their diminished productivity, quality and attention to safety continue the costly cycle.
A majority of organizations (54 percent) report that they send sick employees home, while 40 percent educate employees on the importance of staying home when sick and 34 percent foster a culture that discourages employees from coming to work sick. Thirty percent of employers say they use telecommuting programs as another way to deter presenteeism.
Its now clear that absenteeism is a problem that is on the rise with new trends on the horizon. Organizations have to invest time, effort and human resources to come up with programs to combat these issues before they harm the reputation. Recognizing patterns and coming up with programs to combat absenteeism is a good start. These policies have to be clearly communicated to the employees and also evaluated from time to time to ensure their effectiveness.
Absenteeism is a looming dark side to the organizational behavior.
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