Absenteeism and Employee Turnover - Essay Example

Absenteeism and Employee Turnover Name Institution Absenteeism and Employee Turnover Introduction Each business including Dryburgh Footware Company expects that each worker is present in work within the required time. Any deviation from fixed time reporting could be loss to the organization. Absence is a phenomenon find in most businesses and it has grown to be an issue for most managers since it is costly for both the employees and businesses. There are many factors that affect absence including the myriad attitude. Mostly, employee attendance is affected by employees’ motivation to attend and ability to attend. Employee absenteeism and turnover has become a serious problem for Dryburgh Footware Company since it suffers from high levels of absenteeism and turnover. Most research considers absenteeism as a pattern or habit through which employees miss work without any good reason (Lussier & Hendon, 2013). On the other hand, turnover is the percentage of employer’s workforce that requires replacement due to voluntary and involuntary separation of the workers from the employment. Some of the voluntary turnover includes leaving the employment to retire, illnesses, and better career opportunities while involuntary turnover involves laying off the employees and termination of employment contract due to poor performance. Case Study Analysis The productivity of the organization stand subject to on the performance of the employees within the workplace. Various causes of employee behaviors such as lateness, social loafing, turnover, absenteeism, lack of interest, and careless work tendency tend to affect the quality and quantity of work output. Such behaviours has significantly lead to destruction of Dryburgh Footware Company’s productivity and decline in the production volume. Therefore, it is always the role of the manager to ensure that there is high performance from the employees. However, turning poor performance of the employees to high performance depends on the motivational processes which make it important for the managers to understand the needs of the employees to achieve the needed organizational goals (Thomas, 2015). Various studies have highlighted different methods of motivating the employees: promotion, competitive and salary increment, and training programs. Through appropriate motivational program, Dryburgh Footware Company’s employees could work efficiently. Nonetheless, the company has failed to link its motivational practices with the needs of the employees and company’s goals. The aim of the business is to hire and retain the employees. Therefore, Dryburgh Footware Company needs to have human resources policy to hire and ensure retention of effective employees. Based on the analysis, absenteeism within the company also impairs organizational output performance with direct costs experienced by the business include sick pay of the individuals absent; however, there are also indirect costs involved. Business efficiency declined due to production loss, low employee productivity due to less experienced replacements, disruption of work flows, reduction in the quality, additional cost of training, and morale effects on the other employees. However, to handle these problems, business needs to understand the operations of the industry. The profits of the organization are low with award wages given to the employees were among the lowest within the manufacturing industry in Australia. The main focus of the management at Dryburgh Footware Company is cost-conscious. The company has made significant efforts to permanently curb issues associated with absenteeism and labour turnover; however, it is unfortunate that there seems to be no permanent solution. Absenteeism and labour turnover in the company are due to personal and external forces and contributes to both psychological and economic consequences on the output level as the organization is striving to control the situation. The ability of the organization to control and manage absenteeism effectively determines its impact on the work output. To some extent, it is difficult to determine if the workers have genuine concerns regarding absenteeism. Withdrawal behaviours in form of absenteeism and labour turnover are very costly for Dryburgh Footware Company. Most staffs from Dryburgh Footware Company exhibit some of the withdrawal behaviours which are costly to the business as they result in delay of administrative roles which in turn leads to decline in productivity. In some cases, employees at Dryburgh Footware Company consider absenting themselves from work without permission and when they seek permission, it is late which creates several difficulties to arrange replacements. Impact of Absenteeism and Employee Turnover In Dryburgh Footware Company, the impacts of absenteeism and employee turnover are great. In any business, high degree of absenteeism and turnover can be a great problem for the business. Absenteeism tends to hurt organizational productivity and costs. For example, Dryburgh Footware Company suffers from high level of absenteeism within its production department. In its assembly line, the employees are often absent. Moreover, the production employees need to operate complex machinery which needs adequate training and development and temporary employees lacking the requisite of picking up the roles of the absent employees. As a result, organizational production tends to decline with the absence of the employees which costs the company huge amount of money. In addition, most of the absences within Dryburgh Footware Company are paid leave which means that although production has declined, the cost of labour has remained the same. Even though the management at Dryburgh Footware Company suspects that most of its employees are abusing their sick leaves, it is a great challenge to prove such speculation. In Dryburgh Footware Company, turnover is even much more serious problem that affects the production process and efficiency of the organization. Turnover not only causes problems associated with challenges but also result in the loss of organizational human resources which are not easily replaceable. For example, some business’ best innovative researchers and engineers have voluntarily separated from the service in a bid to pursue various opportunities. If the business loses such employees, then it would not only be hurting the productivity of the business but also weakening organizational strategies due to specialized skills and creativity that the employees contribute to the organization. Various research have explained in wider perspective that absenteeism can be considered a withdrawal syndrome in which the employees react to the undesirable working conditions through activities which are designed to distance them from work (Shehada & Shehhi, 2017). In Dryburgh Footware Company, the management has considered employee motivation, shifting in the work system, establishing effective team work, and other means to improve employees’ level of happiness and guarantee job satisfaction with an aim of improving employee absenteeism and labour turnover which in turn enhance organizational performance. Nevertheless, despite increased awareness on the adverse effects of absenteeism on the overall productivity and performance of the business, the level of absenteeism has remained high in Dryburgh Footware Company. Change Management to Address Absenteeism and Employee Turnover The aim of every business is to ensure that it reaches profitability level through ensuring adequate satisfaction of the needs of potential customers and employees. Change is one of the inevitable activities undertaken by businesses especially with increased cost of productivity and decline in performance as experienced in Dryburgh Footware Company. The company needs to find solutions to its rampant absenteeism and turnover. Through extrinsic and intrinsic motivational strategies, the company could introduce change management practices to ensure efficiency and effectiveness of the company. Understanding the losses due to absenteeism and staff turnover could serve as important tool to assist the business make investment decisions; therefore, a small change in the management practices can have a large influence on the organization. In Dryburgh Footware Company, employee performance is important to achieve its goals and objectives. Employees are the greatest assets to the business (Australian Public Service Commission, 2017). Due to unavoidable environmental changes, businesses have been challenged to advocate for the changes that influence the performance of the employees. Thus, top management need to ensure that various factors influencing the performance of the employees are considered. Change is considered as anything that presses employees out of their comfort zone which is inevitable; as a result, it comes to the organization in various forms including new leadership, technological implementation, restructuring of the organization, and change in compliance that motivates employees to attend to their work stations. Organizational change is radical and has the ability through which the business operates. Change management is a style of management that aims to encourage the company and employees to deal effectively with the changes taking place in the work environment. For change management to be effective and yield positive impact in Dryburgh Footware Company, the management needs to understand various issues motivating the employees and enrol employee motivation to report to work at the required time. Globally, technological introduction has played significant role to enhance employee efficiency. Within the production department, there is need to ensure that the company uses advanced machinery to motivate the employees to report at work. Although absenteeism and labour turnover is attributable to stress, high vacancy rates, and other factors, most research hold that the decision to be absent is determined with various work attitude: role overload, organizational commitment, and job satisfaction. Through change management, it is clear that company’s human resource management of absenteeism would assist to improve organizational corporate performance (Steers, 2012). The rate at which the business loses its profitability and experiences deterioration in overall performance, there is prerequisite to put measures in place to control cases associated with absenteeism. Most employees legitimately lie and practice absenteeism from work in the quest to run their errands. Research indicate that employees have used potential legitimacy as a tool to absent themselves from work. Strengthening Quality Measures in the Company Business success has made efficiency an important challenge for the management and employees within the company. Like the employees at each level, the management of Dryburgh Footware Company needs to care about quality since poor quality limits business’ success to the resources and raises the costs of production. When experienced employees continuously absent themselves from the organization, then quality of the output is questionable. If the quality of company’s products and services offered by the company is low, then the whole organizational suffers (Lussier & Hendon, 2013). As a result, with the words spreading across the market regarding the quality of organizational products, the customers consider other alternatives which in turn make the organization develop a negative image that drives away the customers. In the end, the company loses business and revenues which makes it difficult to attract the limited resources. High levels of absenteeism and labour turnover as experienced within the organization portray failures by the management to develop efficient human resource management that motivate workers to report to their work stations. There are many methods of improving quality that Dryburgh Footware Company could employ to enhance various challenges experienced due to employee absenteeism and labour turnout. In Dryburgh Footware Company, the management needs to consider total quality management (TQM) that brings together various quality control methods. Through the method, the organization would be focusing on satisfaction of the customers through improving various business processes including efficiency and reliability of the employees. Based on the analysis of the case, Dryburgh Footware Company has continued to experience constant cost of production and reduction in revenues due to high numbers of customers absenting themselves from work. Through developing TQM, there would be need for the management to make employees understand the significant role they play to ensure that the business meets its needs. However, for quality products, Dryburgh Footware Company must ensure that the needs and grievances of the employees which make them fail to reach their duties are addressed (Franceschini & Galetto, 2006). To ensure effective development of TQM, the best strategy that the company needs to employ is using the groups such as employee involvement in identifying and solving organizational problems. The main principle of TQM is to ensure that the employees at all levels focusing on meeting the needs of both the customers and organization; however, this is unachievable if Dryburgh Footware Company still experiences cases associated absenteeism and labour turnout. References Australian Public Service Commission. (2017). APSC-Change management and employee performance. Retrieved August 16, 2017, from http://www.apsc.gov.au/about-the-apsc/parliamentary/state-of-the-service/state-of-the-service-2013-14/sosr-2013-14/theme-two-effectiveness/chapter-6/change-management-and-employee-performance Franceschini, F., & Galetto, M. (2006). Benchmarking in total quality management. Bradford, England: Emerald Group Pub. Lussier, R. N., & Hendon, J. R. (2013). Human resource management: Functions, applications, skill development. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications. Shehada, D. M., & Shehhi, M. F. (2017). Employee Turnover and Retention Strategy at Dubai Public Prosecution. The International Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Invention, 6(4), 108-122. Steers, R. M. (2012). Employee turnover and absenteeism: A future research agenda. PsycEXTRA Dataset, 2(1), 99-112. Thomas, O. O. (2015). Effects of Organizational Structure on Job Satisfaction in the Nigerian Financial Sector : Empirical Insight from Selected Banks in Lagos State. NG-Journal of Social Development, 5(1), 96-108. Read More