Absenteeism in U.S. workplace hits highest level in years

Marc

Hunkered Down for the Duration with a Mask on...
Staff member
Admin
#1
From the Associated Press:
AP said:
Absenteeism in U.S. workplace hits highest level in years

Workers are taking more unscheduled days off as bosses struggle to curb the practice. Skipping work without good reason? You have lots of company.

Unscheduled absenteeism at U.S. companies and organizations has climbed to its highest level since 1999, according to results of a recent nationwide survey of human resource executives in U.S. companies and organizations. The survey, conducted for CCH by the Harris Interactive consulting firm, put the U.S. absenteeism rate at 2.5 percent in 2006, up from 2.3 percent a year ago and the highest since seven years ago when it was 2.7 percent. It found that personal illness accounts for only 35 percent of unscheduled absences, with the rest due to family issues (24 percent), personal needs (18 percent), stress (12 percent) and entitlement mentality (11 percent).

EXPENSIVE TREND

Regardless of the reason, the trend is costly for U.S. companies. CCH, which provides human resources and employment law information and services for businesses, said absenteeism costs some large employers an estimated $850,000 per year in direct payroll costs -- more when factoring in lost productivity, morale and temporary labor costs.

'Organizations are engaged in a tug-of-war for their employees' time,'' said Pamela Wolf, an employment law analyst for CCH. ``With unscheduled absences trending upward, companies need to get a good understanding of why employees are calling in sick at the last minute, what impact this has on other employees who are expected to pick up the slack, as well as the impact it has on customers and anyone else relying on the absent worker.''

PAID LEAVE BANK

The survey found that the use of ''paid leave banks,'' also known as paid time off, are seen as the most effective way for companies to try to reduce unscheduled absences. Paid leave banks provide employees with a bloc of hours to be used for various purposes instead of having to take sick, vacation or personal time. ''Disciplinary action can be effective up to a point, but it can also encourage the wrong behavior if the result is that individuals who are ill come to work sick -- a problem known as presenteeism,'' Wolf said.

Despite higher rates of unscheduled absenteeism overall, CCH said, companies with low morale also have more ill workers showing up for work. Results were based on an online survey of 326 human resource executives in 47 states from June 28 through July 17. No margin of error was given.
 
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Jen Kirley

Quality and Auditing Expert
Staff member
Admin
#2
Hmmm. I wonder if this somehow correlates with recently stalled U.S. productivity gains I read about.
 

ScottK

Not out of the crisis
Staff member
Super Moderator
#3
Here's why it happens in my company...

because it's far easier to apologize for a "sick day" than it is to ask permission for a "personal day".

sad but true.
 

SteelMaiden

Super Moderator
Super Moderator
#4
How exactly do they define unscheduled absenteeism? (really, I am serious, as the definition might lead us to a better understanding)

Does this include time people have to take off to visit a doctor for some "bug" they've caught? I know that since I've been single again, I've had to take more time off work to catch up on day to day errands. (banks and necessary services are all closed here on Saturdays, meaning that I have to handle all business transactions during my working hours) Do those absences count towards this statistic, or is it only people calling in for an entire day?
 

Jim Wynne

Staff member
Admin
#5
These sorts of things are rife with misunderstanding. Going back to the first day of statistics training, we'll recall that in a normally-distributed population, a change in the mean always happens for an identifiable reason. It doesn't happen due to random causes. If, in this case, the mean actually has changed significantly, it's because some part of the process has changed. My own hypothesis is that if absenteeism is on the rise, it's because,
  • there is an increasing tendency to build workforces from the segments of the population that are most likely to be ill (due to lack of access to good medical care) and have other personal problems, such as family issues, substance abuse, and problems with the law. In this sense, employers want to have their cake and eat it too; they want labor at the lowest possible cost, but don't want to have to deal with the inevitable issues that are attendant upon the "strategy."
  • hourly work is increasingly automated and boring, and because of misbegotten attempts at mistake-proofing (removing, as much as possible, the human elements of production) the human need for participation is strangled, and people find it almost impossible to be interested in their work. (See Deming, and pride of workmanship.)
Blaming hourly workers for increasing absenteeism rates is tantamount to blaming the people who drowned when the Titanic sank for the lack of lifeboats. Manfacturing processes have this strange habit of working according to the way they're designed, and when they fail, it's almost always because of faulty design. It's a lot easier, though, just to shoot the messenger.
 

Jim Wynne

Staff member
Admin
#6
How exactly do they define unscheduled absenteeism? (really, I am serious, as the definition might lead us to a better understanding)

Does this include time people have to take off to visit a doctor for some "bug" they've caught? I know that since I've been single again, I've had to take more time off work to catch up on day to day errands. (banks and necessary services are all closed here on Saturdays, meaning that I have to handle all business transactions during my working hours) Do those absences count towards this statistic, or is it only people calling in for an entire day?
In general, the computation involves scheduled hours vs. hours actually worked. In other words, if you have 50 people who are each scheduled to work 40 hours, there are 2000 scheduled hours, and anything not scheduled (call-ins, doctor visits, etc.) is subtracted from the total. In general, the only scheduled off-time considered is for vacations, holidays and other events that are generally scheduled on an annual basis, or events such as strikes and power outages that might occur outside of the schedule.
 
C

Cordon - 2007

#7
These sorts of things are rife with misunderstanding. Going back to the first day of statistics training, we'll recall that in a normally-distributed population, a change in the mean always happens for an identifiable reason. It doesn't happen due to random causes. If, in this case, the mean actually has changed significantly, it's because some part of the process has changed. My own hypothesis is that if absenteeism is on the rise, it's because,
  • there is an increasing tendency to build workforces from the segments of the population that are most likely to be ill (due to lack of access to good medical care) and have other personal problems, such as family issues, substance abuse, and problems with the law. In this sense, employers want to have their cake and eat it too; they want labor at the lowest possible cost, but don't want to have to deal with the inevitable issues that are attendant upon the "strategy."
  • hourly work is increasingly automated and boring, and because of misbegotten attempts at mistake-proofing (removing, as much as possible, the human elements of production) the human need for participation is strangled, and people find it almost impossible to be interested in their work. (See Deming, and pride of workmanship.)
Blaming hourly workers for increasing absenteeism rates is tantamount to blaming the people who drowned when the Titanic sank for the lack of lifeboats. Manfacturing processes have this strange habit of working according to the way they're designed, and when they fail, it's almost always because of faulty design. It's a lot easier, though, just to shoot the messenger.
The thought here is that people are over paid; they can afford to miss work.:biglaugh:
 

SteelMaiden

Super Moderator
Super Moderator
#8
Thanks Jim, so, since we can assume that most working citizens are getting better health care (i.e. seeing a doctor for scheduled preventive health maintenance) and more and more services are containing their business hours to the work week, eliminating the need to pay personnel to work on Saturday along with the current trend to hire temporary employees for lots of unskilled, low paying positions, and a rise in the number of single parent and households where both parents work full time, is there any wonder that this statistic would shift?

Gosh, I wish that I had the brains to be the person getting paid government grants to state the obvious.:notme:
 
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