Managing Absenteeism In The Food Manufacturing Industry

Introduction to Research

There has been many researches that have been conducted to determine the relations of Human Resource Manager and the employees of a company. In this context, it is the duty of the Human Resource Management to consider and solve the problems faced by the employees. This is because the problems can lead to a loss in the finance of an organization. Absence Management is the process of reduction of absenteeism of employees due to factors of sickness and injury strategically through procedures. The policies are required to be communicated properly to the employees and managers by the Human Resource managers so that they can have an effective impact. Absence management is required by organizations to communicate about their policies that cover the absence of the employees. It is an integral aspect of constructing effective employee relations by the company the organization in focus here is BM Food Manufacturers.

Absence of employees in a company is not considered beneficial to the organization since it results to the loss in production and funds. Several researches have been conducted on absence management in many industries but not on the food production industry. It is important for any organization in the food production sector to take appropriate actions on this issue so that they can decrease the damage caused to them. At the same time, good absence management policies also help the Human Resource Management to build good relations with the employees.

The aim of this research is to suggest new and effective ways in which absence of employees can be managed more efficiently amongst the staff and management team, focussing on reports of case study of various companies of the food production sector.

The research objectives are as follows:

1. Review of the current literature around absence management methods.
2. Identification and review of current Absence Management methods within the company of BM Food Manufacturers Private Limited.
3. Proposal and recommendation of contemporary and dynamic ways by which Absence Management Methods can be used and implemented.
4. A follow up review of the methods after twelve months of implementation and inclusion and reporting to the senior management of the company.

BM Food Manufacturers Private Limited was established in the year 2006. The entity has the capability of manufacturing a wide range of frozen products throughout Britain. BM Food Manufacturers Private Limited has two chief processing plants. The first one is located in Bristol and the other one outside Cardiff. Fresh products are delivered twice a week to all the clients across the country. The mission of the company is to introduce upheaval, manufacture, dispense and market food products of magnificent quality generated in an environment that is controlled and using the freshest and finest of ingredients. The mission is the creation of a workplace that pays respect and value to the population from disparate backgrounds that enables all working employees to reach their maximum capacity.

Key Stakeholders	Level of Interest	Reason of Interest
Customers	Medium	The most important stakeholder in a business is their customers, they are the one for whom the products are manufactured and acquired.
Investors	High	The investors are the one who provide money with which the business goes forward.
Employees	Medium	The most important resource for a company.
Interest Groups	High	The various groups such as the vendors, suppliers all are important stakeholder to the business.

Theories about attendance of the employees and absenteeism at wok organizations have been existent for many years. The theories have often regarded absenteeism in an elaborated manner and considered several reasons for absence. According to (Gosselin, Lemyre and Corneil 2013), sickness has been observed as one of the several reasons for absence but has not been given proper attention. The studies conducted on the concept have been considered absenteeism majorly from two angles. Apart from that, the absence of the employees in the workplaces is significantly attached to the external factors like the differences in opinion among the employees or the cultural differences among the employees which is barring the effective and fruitful communication among the employees. According to Mowday, Porter and Steers (2013), the organizations are observing significant amount of issues regarding the decision making of the organization on whether they will allow the employees to conduct in their own way or there will be specified mode of operation prescribed by the organization. It is observed that the employees who prefers to do the job in independent way or in the way which they prefer, are facing the issues in a more evident as almost every organization is striving towards having a specified method of business conduction. The individual mode of conduction are observed to have significant amount of conflicts with the specified method of the organizations.  Stoetzer et al. (2014) states that an in depth analysis of the cross cultural issues will portray the fact that the major reason behind the absence of the employees is the dissatisfaction generated from the cross cultural differences among the employees. Several critics of the cross cultural communication is able to acknowledge that the employees of different culture faces significant amount of difficulty in integrating among them as the language or the cultural assimilation may not be there. This is a notable reason which affects the fruitful communication among the employees which is highly desired in cases of effective team work. In such cases where the integration is not achieved among all the employees owing to the reason of cultural differences, are observed to have significant detrimental effects in the operations as a team. These creates considerable amount of dissatisfaction among the employees as the fails to deliver in the desired manner. Apart from that the study of Cucchiella, Gastaldi and Ranieri (2014) confirms that the wages and the work-time characteristics is a major reason behind the absenteeism. The functionalistic approach defined absenteeism as a deviant behaviour that can be attributed to unsatisfactory working conditions, whereas the analytical approach defined is as a social conflict between works and employers. Absence from work was segregated to absence for the reason of illness and voluntary absence.

Aim and Objective

The qualitative research methods are usually used to determine the rate of absenteeism and the factors causing it. This is due to the different opinions of different individuals that are neither quantitative in nature nor can they be determined by quantitative methods of research. (Siukola 2013) used methods such as questionnaires, collecting data from sick absence register, group interviews and senior programmes. Collection of data by the questionnaire method is considered to be the most common method of conducting qualitative research. It has certain advantages.

The concepts of absenteeism was investigated by (Gangai16 2014) and were divided into four categories mainly. The first category suggested if the satisfaction is high with the company and the immediate work situation, then the rate of absenteeism is low. Secondly, if the rate of satisfaction is high but low with the work situation then the rate of absenteeism is high. However, if the level of satisfaction is low with the company, but high with the situation of work, there is a high rate of absenteeism.

According to (Cucchiella, Gastaldi and Ranieri 2014), absenteeism is defined as occasional absenteeism from work by habit for several days, which is generally rationalized by a medical certificate but actually because of personal interests and poor sense of duty. In addition, it is also defined as mediocrity, lack of interest in problems of political and social in nature or on issues of customary interest. The pessimistic meanings of these definitions can be noticed which highlight the misuse of the personal absences as opposed to the interest of the society or the company. It is the negative side of the problem that is usually underlined even though it is a necessity and justified in several instances. It is also a right, which is obtained luckily after years of struggles of the working class. The authors have defined absenteeism into various expressions, which are permitted by law. One of the factors that can be considered as absenteeism is vacation, which is a period of relaxation from work. In addition, day off or absenteeism from employment for a definite period that is planned from earlier with the employer is also considered as absenteeism. Strike or the collective avoidance of work by the working employees for the purpose of protecting their interests of economy, politics and union. Leaves or suspension of work by the employees to reconnect the position of the employer with his commitments to the public or the occurrence of issues related to self or family.

The major forms of absenteeism in the food production sector are sick leaves. However, there are other factors why employees are absent from work. Absence Management is the tool of Human Resource Management that investigates into these factors to introduce policies convenient to the employees to reduce the rate of absenteeism in any company including BM Food Manufacturers Private Limited. The term sickness absence if interpreted literally stands for absence from work due to sickness. In other words, a disease proves to be a problem of impaired ability to work. In other industries, it is also same, however, the work is not interrelated.

Key Stakeholders

Impaired work ability and disease are interrelated even though there are other factors, which can affect the ability to work. The anomaly is not simple because work ability along with health are continuous. Whereas, from the perspective of sickness absence management, it is a differentiated concept that is, an employee is either present or absent. Furthermore, considering these factors, sickness absence can also be termed as disability absence.

Questionnaires are one of the most affordable and convenient methods of collecting responses (Rowley 2014). The companies generally utilize this method of data collection because this method does not incur expenses on the company depending on then ways of administration. The method is immensely practical in nature because the questions are usually open ended or multiple choice type. The conducting person or organizations get their results at a considerably low amount of time. The scalability of the surveys is huge. It is possible to gather information from a large number of audiences through this method. Considering the advancement in technology today, the scale is only inflating. The analyses are practical in nature and give realistic outcomes or predictions of outcome. This is because the research is not based on assumptions but facts collected from actual people.

However, there are disadvantages of questionnaires too (Murgan 2015). The respondents might not be completely honest while answering the questions. This influences the research and drives it in the wrong direction. It is difficult to interpret the thought of the respondent while researching using a questionnaire because often the questions are of multiple choice types. In addition, some of the questions may even be hard to analyse. Open ended questions for example cannot be quantified and requires a human review. Furthermore, some questions those are open ended, produce data beyond the capacity of analysis. The respondents may have a hidden agenda behind answering the questions. Their response is bound to influence the research and can affect the analysis. In addition, the respondents often skip questions while answering them. The skipping of questions often fail to generate the idea of the analysis and can also result to incompletion in the data collection method which eventually affects the direction and purpose of the analysis.

Work stress was investigated and analysed by Cooper in his work stress model (Sneddon, Mearns and Flin 2013). It is conferred here as an opinion to structure the determining factors used in the current study. The work stress model of Cooper includes the concept of various sources of stress in the environment. These sources of stress merge together with the personal characteristics of the individual and lead to stress related conclusion. These symptoms can be of ill health as a result of occupation and more possible diseases. These sources of stress can be present at work environment or even in the interface of home and work. This model by Cooper suggests individual symptoms along with symptoms of the organization such as high absenteeism rates. These are contemplated to affect the individual suffering from it. There are majorly two aims in the background of the work stress model to understand stress at work. The first objective is to identify possible adverse conditions of work and uplift the quality of working life of the employees. The second aim is to classify individuals who are the best fits for the job role and its conditions of work. The sources of stress at work involve factors inherent to the job, the role in the organization, development of career, relationships at work and structure of the organization and atmosphere. Along with this the cultural differences among the employees is also a significant issue which the research is able to establish. The differences among the culture of the employees is highly influential and is a major factor which leads to the stress of the employees. The employees who are considered to be the outsiders of the culture are observed to face significant issue in getting integrated to the employees of the host culture and that creates significant issue in the effective team work. Along with this the generation of the work stress is visible as the proper integration is not achievable and that creates significant faults in case of the proper execution of their operations. Hence one of the most crucial factor which has significant detrimental effects in the smooth conduction of the business operation is the issue of cultural differences. Along with this, another important factor in the creation of the job stress of the employees is the work time characteristics of the organizations. The research is able to define that the professionals are usually subjected to significant amount of stress generated from the inappropriate rewarding of their operations inside the organization. The unsuitable policy of in cases of the rewarding of the overtime of the employees is observed create significant amount job stress among the employees. Such factors elemental to the job may involve demands physical in nature and the required task in the job. They may encompass unsatisfactory conditions of work, overload of work, pressure of time or responsibility for lives of others. To be more specific, physical demands and discomfort can be caused by vibration and noise, extreme temperatures, lighting, factors of hygiene, shift of work, load of work, overtime at work, inclusion of new technology, repetitiveness and monotony, traversing and experience of various hazards and risk. These factors have the potential to be agents of stress.

Occupation and industry	Full-time wage and salary workers	Total	Illness or injury	Other reasons	Total	Illness or injury	Other reasons
Food preparation and serving related occupations	4,443	3.2	2.2	0.9	1.5	1.1	0.4

Literature Review

                                             

The aforementioned graph shows the absenteeism faced by the food production industry. According to this graph, the major reasons for absenteeism are illness and injury along with other reasons, which occupy a smaller region in the graph.

                                                 

According to the graph mentioned above, the major reason for absenteeism in the food production sector is illness or injury as compared to other reasons which contribute to a lesser quantity.

Key Stakeholders	Level of Interest	Feedback method
Customers	Medium	Surveys, feedback forms.
Investors	High	Strategic high level presentation and implementation plan.
Employees	Medium	Conference.
Interest Groups	High	Meeting in a hall.

Conclusion:

The norms of the employees about attendance are expected to revert the absence culture of an organization or a work community. These norms may affect behaviour of absence due to sickness, with additional consideration to short spells of absence. There are different instruments that exist to embolden the employees to avail a sick leave when their perceived load of work is low. In case the reason is a low workload, the employee may be animated to take a sick leave, which is termed as encouragement mechanism. A low burden of work may cause an employee to be less content with his or her share of work. This is termed as satisfaction mechanism. In case of an employee estimating the situation at work to be identical to not being present since the amount of work is less, the employee is subjected to take a sick leave. This is called flexibility mechanism.

This study falls under strategic human resource management that centres on human resource programmes with eternal objective. The chief goal is to increase the productivity of the employees with the prime focus on obstacles of business, which are limiting the performance of the company. The analysis absenteeism, which is considered as one of the strategic aspects of human resource.  It was studied with the objective to consider actions, which will allow the management to increase employee productivity and better the performance of the organization. Considering the causes and effects of absenteeism on a company, certain actions are proposed. Initiatives to improve communication should be implemented by the organization. This is because communication can affect the behaviour of the resource, in this case the employees. A better approach towards improved communications will result to better feedback opportunities from the employees. This would allow the company to improve the policies in favour of the employees ultimately boosting the performance of the company. In addition, the management should focus on the motivation of employees in the form of appraisal and other techniques. Proper motivation increases job satisfaction amongst the employees and eventually resulting in a reduced rate of absenteeism. Furthermore, the company should focus more on providing health benefits to the employees. It should also focus on the protection of health of the employees since they are one of the resources of the company. In addition, since sick leaves are a common problem, this initiative will help the employee as well as the employer to reduce the rate of absenteeism.

Critique of Literature Review

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