I recently read that a survey done by Circadian Technologies indicated that absenteeism was up and employee morale was a large factor.

All my years in human resources made me say, “Duh.”

After all if employees are dissatisfied with their work environment what on earth is going to compel them to want to go there each day?

It made me think of a friend of mine who works in a particularly difficult work environment where employee morale has hit rock bottom, turnover is through the roof, and employees grouse constantly.

In order to rein in absenteeism, they use the most common form of control: disciplinary action. Even this has failed to stem the tide.

One of the main reasons is that the California kin care law requires an employer who offers sick leave to provide half of the accrued and unused time for use to care for certain eligible family members: spouse, children, and such. It further states that no disciplinary action can be taken if an employee avails him or herself of this program.

The employees at my friend’s company caught on quick. Now whenever they need to be out for a “mental health” day, they always claim it’s for an eligible family member enabling them to avoid disciplinary action.

As a human resource professional, it appalls me that someone doesn’t get the connection between employee morale and absenteeism at this company; that they don’t seem to be able to correct the problem.

Oh, they’ve tried: rewards for attendance, alternate work schedules. But until they recognize employee morale as the main issue and determine why it’s in the pooper, they will never be able to fix the absenteeism problem.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007 at 10:56 am and is filed under Employee Relations. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.