How long before we stop treating absence and sickness with amusing condescension and start to appreciate the crippling costs that we have created for our own industry? Peter A Hunter, author of Breaking the Mould turns absence on its head.
When we accept responsibility for creating the conditions for our workforce that make them late or sick we will be halfway to discovering what we can do to reduce the impact of the problem on our ability to compete.
At work, part of the reason that we find the excuses of latecomers and absentees so amusing is because we believe that they have been invented to cover up the fact that the employee is late and that their lateness is their fault.
We laugh at their artifice believing that we can see through their most complicated invention as a result of our loftier perspective.
Can we see far enough through our employee’s invention to realise that these amusing excuses are created because the organisation has created a working environment that is in some cases so stressful and abhorrent to the employee that they have to throw up in the car park before they come to work.
Their amusing excuse could be to cover the shame that an individual feels because they have to do this every morning before they are able to come to work.
Absence and sickness are in some cases unavoidable and in others are a function of the environment that the organisation creates in which their employees work.
The days are long past when we can treat our employees with a cavalier disregard for their welfare or individuality in the certain knowledge that if they get upset and leave it is their fault and we can always replace them.
Our share of the global market is shrinking at a startling rate.
If we continue to ignore the massive costs associated with decreasing retention and absenteeism then we will only accelerate the rate at which our market share is taken from us.
Wake up, start treating employees with the humanity and dignity they deserve.
When we learn how to do this we will be able to appreciate the massive difference in performance that occurs when people feel good about what they do.
If we don’t, the massive overhead that we create for our industry by our behaviour towards our employees will continue to cripple our efforts to compete in a shrinking global market.
Other articles by this author:
- Comment: What do we need to change?
- Change management: Where did it all go wrong?
Clawing back training costs: The truth
4 Responses
How do we use our responsibility?
There have been a number of valuable points raised which, while I would like to honour with debate, I feel shift the focus away from the key issue here which is one of our responsibility to the way others feel about what they do.
It concerns our ability to create the environment in which others work and therefore their response to that environment.
We have a choice.
We can accept responsibility for the way that people feel about what they do and in doing so accept that we can create an environment in which, when faced with a choice, the employee chooses to come to work because we have made that choice attractive.
People with this attitude believe that their workers are valuable and treat them with the care that we normally afford precious things.
Or we can take the traditional approach that an employee’s attitude at work cannot be changed and therefore we have no responsibility for it.
People with this attitude take no care of their workforce because they don’t believe that they are worth caring about.
There were two very potent responses to this issue of responsibility for the way that people feel that were received from an earlier article on this same issue.
The responses polarised the two camps around this argument of responsibility.
The first was that the workforce didn’t want to be there and only turned up for the money so what was the point doing anything for them except to pay them.
The other recognised the direct link between the way the workforce felt about what they did and how well they performed.
The first commentator mentioned that he had retention and recruitment problems.
The second said he had a stable hardworking and skilled workforce.
The first would accept no responsibility for the way his workforce felt and the second believed that they were worth caring for.
Goethe said:
Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them become what they are capable of being.”
I believe a paraphrase would be,
Treat people as if they are valuable and that is what they will become.
Treat them as if they are worthless and that is what they will become.
By refusing to accept responsibility for the environment that we create for people to work in we are treating those people as if they are worthless.
According to Goethe, if that is how we treat people, that is what they will become.
We are responsible for the way that people feel about what they do.
If we don’t accept that responsibility we make our workforce feel worthless.
If we do accept that responsibility then we are well on the way to the stable contented hardworking workforce we aspire to.
It is simple cause and effect.
The things that we do to people, affect what they do to us.
Peter A Hunter
Global competition doesn’t play by our rules
Peter,
Just who are we losing our share of the global market to? Is it to caring employers who do everything in their power to look after their staff? Let’s get real – we have lost our industry to third world sweat shops and up and coming economies where wages, benefits and health and safety costs are not at a premium.
The same is happening to our service industries, call centres, help desks, computer departments etc are being moved to low cost areas where wages, benefits and other are low and there isn’t a need to provide safe let alone pleasant working environments.
We have the luxury of well paid jobs (by global standards) in mostly safe and often relatively pleasant working environments backed up by a welfare state. In countries where jobs are scarce and you have to work to eat the workers can’t afford to turn down work whatever the conditions. That’s where the competition is coming from. Even within the EEC it is the French factories with their pleasant working conditions and generous benefits that are closing because they can’t compete with the lower cost base of the recent member states where working conditions are far worse.
Absence levels are highest in the public sector / large employers where benefits and working conditions tend to be good – it is the small employers who often limit sick pay to SSP and offer less attractive working environments where absence is lowest, which suggests that improving working conditions may not lower absence levels. There is a link between absence and the working environment but it is only a small part of a much bigger and more complex problem.
Sickness costs and absence levels are real issues for the UK economy and we do need to reduce them but it will take much more than improving the working environment to have a significant impact. The wider issues include
HEALTH – smoking, binge drinking, drug taking, lack of exercise and the wide range of social issues such as the loss of family support and the breakdown of marriages / relationships all add to the absence problems employers face
THE LACK OF WORK ETHIC – we live in a world where instant gratification, which work simply can’t offer day in and day out, is expected and for years we have educated our children to do what they enjoy rather than teaching them to enjoy what they do, so we shouldn’t be suprised that some people take time off at every opportunity
MOTIVATION – with a benefits system that penalises those who work and save and supports those who can’t or won’t, can we be suprised that our staff take so much time off?
Perhaps we have to recognise that generous sick pay schemes, like pensions, are not affordable in a global market. Tinkering with the working environment may help in the short term but they won’t allow us to compete with countries where these costs can be avoided all together.
Absence/attendance
I find both of the arguments unduly simplistic.
I can also intellectualise about motivation and environment but I will refrain. There are in simple terms three sorts of absence:
the genuinely too ill to work
the skivers
the under the weather brigade who will attend work if they feel motivated to do so and will not if they don’t
The skivers are very much the minority
leaving aside the potential role of Occ health and good imaginative maagement to faciltate the return of the first category, then we are left with motivating the majority to attend rather than be absent.
If a stick to simple concepts again then you are down to carrot and stick.
Peter implies that if we just offered enough environmental carrots all would be well. I am certainly not advocating just sticks but i would maintain that organisation need a balanced approach. People need to know that the skivers and the can’t be bothereds will be dealt with in some way. They equally need to know that they will be treated with concern and understanding on the rare occasions they are off work due to incapacitating sickness. They also need to want to come to work because they enjoy the work, rheir colleagues and their boss treats them well
Creating the right conditions takes us more than half way to business success and good attendance but good absence management is as much about control as it is freedom. You need a balanced approach. The exponents of just disciplinary action or SSP only are missing as many tricks as the pink and fluffy brigade.
we need to think about rewarding attendance and success rather than just punishing absence. By reward I certainly do not mean attendance bonuses they are on a par with suggestion schemes as a sign of failure to engage.
Peter
Discouraging Sickness Absence: a rod for our own back back?
I agree with Mr Hunter’s comments. Something that concerns me greatly is my present company’s policy not to pay employees (even those on salaries) while they are off sick other than SSP after the third day. While I fully appreciate the need to discourage people taking liberties with unnecessary absences, I do feel this puts those with genuine illness at a distinct disadvantage. I would be interested to know if the company could be held liable if an employee continued coming to work whilst ill because they couldn’t afford to lose at least 3 days’ pay and then made themselves seriously ill, or even had an accident, as a result (not to mention if they passed flu or whatever to their colleagues as well)?
Some companies seem to be forgetting to look after the “HEALTH” as well as the “Safety” of their employees and I believe companies need to recognise and accept that, being “mere humans”, employees are susceptable to illness, whether colds, migranes, broken bones or worse. We need to treat people as individuals and accept that different people suffer in different ways and to different extents. I think companies should be focussing on spotting and stopping the less-genuine absences, rather than just penalising everyone, as this (in my company at least) seems only to increase the stress levels for the more conscientious employee.