BUS209: Organizational Behavior

Attendance at work has been a focus of research interest for almost a century. Employee absence was considered to be a form of withdrawal behaviour -- where employees chose to withdraw their labour from the workplace either permanently or temporarily. It was thought to be related to employee turnover and that the two were able to be treated in the same way. Subsequent research, however, has shown that employee absence and turnover are different, as are the consequences of each. In particular, absence is now considered to be more spontaneous than turnover and more likely to occur as a replacement for turnover when turnover is not a viable option; for example, when prevailing economic conditions lead to a tight labour market.

Absence behaviour has been shown to be influenced by a broad range of factors related to both the workplace (for example, the characteristics of the job and quality of leadership in the workplace) and the employee (for example, the values and expectations of the employee and external factors such as their domestic or financial situation). From a practical perspective, an employee's attendance at work can be shown to be a function of their ability to attend work, their motivation to attend work and the attendance culture in the workplace.

Ability to attend

A range of factors external to the employee affects their ability to attend work. The two most important are health and carer responsibilities. The decision to be absent from the workplace to expedite recovery from an illness or injury, or manage an ongoing disability, or to meet caring responsibilities (for children, partners or, increasingly, parents) requires a complex decision on the part of the employee. This decision-making process takes into account the employee's personal health and consequent ability to contribute productively to the workplace, the disruption potentially caused by attending work when ill, the need of family for support, responsibilities to the workplace (including work colleagues), and personal accountability for work deliverables.

Typically, the effect of these factors on employee attendance will be largely unanticipated and provision is made for this in modern workplaces through workplace agreements. Most of these allow for some leave to be taken without the requirement to produce evidence and a persistent concern for employers is the '… perceived tendency for workers to take'non-genuine' absences'. Given this concern, it could be argued that the real focus on absence in the workplace (and the APS in particular) is this 'abuse' of leave entitlements and not the '… large proportion of … honourable men and women…' who are absent from work because they are genuinely unable to attend. The concern is rightly with those who take advantage of workplace entitlements as a result of motivation (or lack of it) to work.

Motivation to attend

Employee motivation to work has been the subject of an enormous amount of interest in both the academic and practitioner literature since the work of Elton Mayo in the 1920s. There are multiple theories of work motivation (expectancy theory, goal-setting theory, self-regulation theory, work design theory), but perhaps one of the most powerful concepts in understanding employee behaviour in the workplace is employee engagement.

Employee engagement refers to the reciprocal relationship where employees not only gain from participating in work, they actively contribute to the workplace emotionally, cognitively and physically; the latter logically extending to their attendance at work. While an employee's attendance at work is fundamentally driven by their ability to attend work, engagement with work has a critical impact -- an employee's level of engagement with work moderates decisions about whether to attend work if they are unwell or have family or caring commitments.

In the APS, employee engagement is assessed using the APS Employee Engagement Model. This model considers employee engagement in terms of employees' propensity to engage with four components -- the job they do, the team they work with, their supervisor and their agency. Previously, employee engagement in the APS has been shown to be relevant to a range of measures relating to workforce productivity, including intention to leave, sick-leave use and individual performance.

Attendance culture

An attendance culture establishes acceptable levels of absence and grounds for absence within a workplace or work group. There is strong evidence showing that workplace culture has an impact on employee absence and that a culture that promotes and supports attendance can contribute to limiting the impact of sickness and other absence on organisational productivity. While developing an attendance culture is a complex undertaking, it can yield very positive results. For example, in taking this approach, a public sector agency in the United Kingdom reduced its sickness absence rate by almost 50% over a period of six years; resulting in enhanced productivity through having up to 200 more employees at work each day.

The Australian Public Service Commission (the Commission) provides guidance on creating an attendance culture that refers to issues that influence employee attendance at an agency, work group and individual level. This includes guidance on leadership, management and people management practices, team size and structure, and work-life balance.

An attendance culture establishes a group norm that specifies and moderates the socially acceptable levels and conditions for absence from the workplace. It should be noted that an attendance culture can also operate to establish good attendance as a norm irrespective of work conditions (the'hero' syndrome) or by establishing a group norm that supports absence as a valid response to dissatisfaction with the workplace.

Attendance cultures derive from two sources: the culture around work attendance in society at large and the attendance culture norms within the organisation, workgroup or subculture. The two are related, with the former providing a baseline for the latter.

Source: Naomi Rotter
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License.