Absenteeism and Employee Turnover at Ready to Reach

Introduction

Ready to Reach IT Ltd is a fast-growing IT start – up company with over 150 employees. The company has performed well over the years. In terms of its Human Resource needs, Ready to Reach has outsourced its HR needs; however, there are some lingering problems that have still not been solved and need solutions which the outsource company has not been able to deal with. Seeking HRM dissertation help might provide the best insights into addressing all these persistent issues and optimizing the HR function for improving efficiency.

This report is going to look at the two major issues of the organization, which include increased employees’ absenteeism and a larger number of employee’s turnover. This study will have an in-depth review of the issues and will recommend human resource managers to manage absenteeism and manage retention.

Absence Management

Review

Absence management is the process of reducing the absenteeism of employees mainly caused due to illness and injury using policies and procedures.

It has been reviewed that increased number of absences, bring disruption and spreads negativity among employees; especially those who make an effort to come into work each day; this particularly leads to the financial loss of the company. There are various reasons why absenteeism is increasing in many companies; some do not turn up for work due to sickness, family caring responsibilities, the employee simply not want to come to work or they might be on an authorized leave. According to ACAS, absence management has different patterns:

Traditions of behavior

Levels of health

Management style. (ACAS, 2014)

This supports the statement that absence management does not only involve one factor but also various factors.

Various authors have attempted to find approaches to find out the reason why employees tend to absent from work. Lokke developed an absenteeism model in 2008 which integrated three approaches to study absences, which include the individual approach, economic approach and psychological approach (Vignoli & et al., 2016). The individual approach. The individual approach assumes that absence is being motivated by anything that occurs within the individual which includes gender, age and personal characteristics. The social-psychological approach assumes that absence is circumstantial and even though there is the active management of attendance at the workplace than the result would vary as absence culture is prevalent in some of the departments (Peretz & Fried, 2012). The economic approach assumes that time off work for the vacation possesses positive values for the individual. The Labour-leisure choice theory also stated that the budget constraints faced by them determine the hour of work that an individual wants to work. This model reveals that each of the three approaches combine and make the individual deciding to be absent from work (Tenhiala & et al., 2013). Below is a short graph to outline Looke’s approach to absenteeism.

Golnaz and Lewis suggest that there are three factors have been identified. The first is job involvement; which is the degree to which an employee center’s his/ her life around the workplace and their job satisfaction. The next factor is organizational commitment; which is the extent as to which an employee classifies with the company’s goals and whether they are willing to continue to work for the company in the future. The third factor is Health status; which is composed by both the mental and physical wellness of the employee (Sandri and Lewis,1995).

Steers and Rhode’s model suggests that employee attendance is mostly affected by an employee’s ability to attend work and the employee’s ability to attend work (Rhodes and Steers, 1990).

All the above factors are causes of absenteeism. It is therefore clear that causes of absenteeism can vary from an employees’ job satisfaction, their wellness and their commitment to the company. The next section will recommend ways to reduce or in other words manage absence within the company.

Absence can be managed within the company by 3 factors. Taylor suggests that absence management can be categorized in 3 ways. The first approach is punitive which involves monitoring absence, reviewing absence records, completing sickness forms, making decisions in relations to promotion. The Second approach is the proactive approach; which involves fair procedures, an improvement of the culture and working conditions. The last approach is the positive approach which involves rewards, the offer of incentives for attendance (Taylor, 2005).

Recommendations

Due to the absent management issue within the company the following policies will be suggested:

Flexible Working Policy

This policy is being recommended due to the fact that it has been suggested by London Borough of Merthon/ Merton council that it a way to reduce absence. This claim suggests that by introducing a flexible working policy will help in managing absence. Employees tend to be more encouraged to attend work more if they are offered a more flexible work pattern.

Rewards and Participation Policy: This policy has been chosen as a possible recommendation because employees tend to respond to rewards. Sandry and Lewis’s research proves that rewards directly reduce absenteeism (Sandri and Lewis, 1995); therefore, introduction to a benefits and rewards system will aid in managing the company’s absence better.

A Sandri and Lewis, suggest that employee participation can be approached through various factors such as: share ownership, profit sharing, decision – making and fridge sharing. All the mentioned factors contribute to the involvement of employees (Sandri and Lewis, 1995).

A study conducted on 52 engineering and metalworking firms in the UK, proved that share ownership and profit sharing indeed had a positive impact on employee attendance (Sandri and Lewis, 1995). This suggests that above participation schemes, contribute to absence management and promote job satisfaction, commitment and a healthy working environment for the employees.

Attendance Policy: Sandri and Lewis suggest that the alternation or creation of the work environment is reliant on the company’s attendance policy (Sandri and Lewis, 1995). This particular policy was chosen due to the fact that attendance is a very important factor within the employee life cycle. Whenever a clear attendance system is not provided, the company seems to be affected in many different ways; therefore, it is crucial for the company to have it. It can therefore be recommended that the company provides an absence policy that will provide a fair, consistent and consider sickness and other unforeseen issues that would prompt the employees to miss coming into work. The policy should possess details with information on who to inform, how and by when and include statements regarding pay arrangement on whether the organization should provide a statutory minimum or increase sick pays for a stipulated period (Peretz & Fried, 2012). A HR system should also be applied to record absence, acknowledge the cause of absence and analyze data to underlying trends. The Harvard model also contributes to long term decision making which aims towards the effectiveness of an organization and individual’s well-being. This model has suggested that managers should recognize the different organization’s stakeholders and their views to determine how to execute the business. This model recommends that HRM policies and practices should take situational factors and possess a clear link between HRM policies and organizational strategies (Vignoli & et al., 2016).

Measuring Performance

The above recommendations will have various positive contributions to the organization. We will first start by the rewards and participation policy. This policy will have a great impact on the organization as it will increase the organizations’ competitive advantage; it will add value to the company. Meaning that the company will increase its profit.

The Flexible Working Policy impacts on the organization by increasing employee commitment which to any employer is a great advantage to the company as it allows the company to fulfill their responsibilities to offer a better way of working; this is a good impact as it proves that the company cares about the employees’ mental illness well – being.

According to Tenhiala, the increase in involvement, participation and responsibility of employees could help the manager to attain benefits over a longer period. Stronger management practices could lead to social capital and beneficial for the organization (Tenhiala & et al., 2013).

The next section will be referring to retention.

Review

Retention is the process wherein employees are encouraged to stay with the organization for a longer period and till the project complete. Suzanne suggests that retention starts way before an employee gets offered a position; she goes on to suggest that it starts right when the organization advertises the position right to the employee’s first day at work. This suggests that retention requires preparation right from the beginning of the employee’s journey with the company.

Retention t is one of the major apprehensions of human resource business executives and professionals. It is more important to retain employee’s quality than to recruit, orient and train replacement employees of similar quality. If productive employees are not retained then the organization would face major issues and there would be a lack of talent (Jiang & et al., 2012). Therefore, it is crucial to retain employees within an organization; especially for key employees within the company; Armstrong claims that the “turnover of key employees can have a disproportionate impact on the business” (Armstrong, 2012). Many employees have contributed greatly to the organization and have added many assets over the years; the loss of such employees can cost the company lot as it will be a challenge for the organization to replace employee.

According to the CIPD report carried out in 2017, the majority of organizations are having issues with retaining their staff, and particularly managers, specialists and technical staff (CIPD, 2017); this is due to the fact that it is easier to retain less specialist employees than employees with specialist positions; this is because with a specialist, managerial or technical position; the ideal candidate mostly has to have a particular set of skills and experience.

Retention occurs to due to the following factors: the economic climate, career life changes and many others. Holbeche describes the “early career stage” as generation Y. The author describes that the generation Y (under 30’s) as individuals who “have never expected loyalty from a company, nor have they expected to give it (Holbeche, 2009). This claim suggests that individuals in their early stage of their career do not tend to be loyal; many young employees do not tend to stick with an organization for a long – period of time, rather they tend to move from one company to another until later on in their career stages.

Therefore, all the above statements clearly support the claim that retention within the organization is very important. The next section will offer various recommendations on how the company can retain their employees instead of losing them.

Recommendations

In order to reduce a high. Staff turn over the following policies will be recommended:

Employee Compensation Scheme: In order to reduce employee turnover and enhance retention, there should be a certain degree of respect between management and the rest of employees. The first recommendation or in other words, tool that can be suggested in order to maintain employees within the organization is by introducing an employee compensation policy. The employee compensation scheme has been chosen as a useful tool firstly because it will motivate employees to enjoy working for the company and to also stay associated with the organization (Jiang & et al., 2012). This scheme will practically give employees the assurance that they are not working for nothing and will also enhance job satisfaction. A fair employee compensation policy would give employees the assurance that equality is in place within the organization. It will provide employees a feeling of equality and equal pay for equal work would enhance the respect of the employees towards their company and work. Every employee seeks for job security; the company can therefore provide the following: Retirement plans, Private health care and paid time off. All the factors above will enhance job security for the employees within the organization; Hicklin claims that a good pension scheme will make an employee not want to leave their job (Hicklin, 2008).

Well-being policy: This policy was chosen due to the high rate of stress that is caused by unhappiness at work which then leads to the company having a high rate of staff turnover.

Continue your exploration of A Case Study Analysis of Clethan Clothing with our related content.

To conclude this section, it can be said that fairness and transparency need to be present as it creates a good impression on the employees. It is even recommended that each of the employees should equally be provided with opportunities to make the usage of their skills and work abilities as it enhances their confidence and make them stronger (Jung, 2013). The retention model also recommends that the manager should have an effective working environment wherein no discrimination should take place.

There is even important for the manager to build trust between employees and senior management as trust helps in making a stronger relationship.

Measuring Performance

According to Yang & et al, employee retention should be measures. This is because it assists in acknowledging their situation (Yang & et al., 2012). The employee’s happiness is one of the major factors which assist the manager in knowing if employees are choosing to stay with the company or not. Managers can even track the voluntary turnover rates and the involuntary turnover rate to analyze the issues the organization is facing. The manager should even measure the talent turnover rate and give additional attention to talented employees (Hicklin, 2008).

Conclusion and summary recommendations

It had been concluded after reviewing the whole study that absenteeism and increased turnover rate are two major issues prevailing in an organization which not only leads to financial loss but also disturbs the performance of employees. It is recommended that human resource managers should give full attention to their employees, wherein it should apply policies and inspire them with motivational strategies. Moreover, the manager should also acknowledge the root cause of the absence of the employees and reduce salary if the reason seems to be unreliable.