Why the absenteeism plan will succeed
Jack Parks, a benefits and services manager in the auto electronics division of USA Motors, proposed a plan on reducing the number of absenteeism in the company. This plan has a greater chance of succeeding because of the following reasons. The initial plan was made by the company out of goodwill to improve on the responsibility of employees in the company. The plan’s weakness has resulted in more irresponsibility from the employees who take advantage of being absent without a valid reason. Their absence still does not affect their financial status, which then makes them have frequent absenteeism.
I think Parks’s plan of working on the rate of controllable absenteeism will work. It is simply because of the failure of a more generous plan that was instituted to increase responsibility, which later proved to be increasing irresponsibility. Cutting 10 % of the employee’s holiday, vacation, and sickness or accidents when such an employee’s absence is deemed beyond the required standards will result in more responsible absenteeism and thus increased efficiency of the company due to a reduction of about 11 % or more as speculated by Parks.
The plan will also seek to increase long absenteeism because it covers six months, and a constant reduction of pay is evident if the chronic absenteeism continues. In essence, a 15 % miss of the normal working days in the first period of six months will consequently see a further decrease of 10 % from the normal holiday, vacation and sickness or accidents provided by the company. This incentive is neutral and reduces irresponsible acts of absenteeism from the workers of the company.
Absenteeism under employee’s control
More than 50 % of the rate of absenteeism is under the control of the company’s employees. These employees are only taking advantage of the company’s goodwill of paying for their absence when they report to the company that they will be absent for a certain week and for how long. The coincidence of the fact that employees received full week’s pay in June when the company pays the unused paid absence prompted these employees not to charge off paid absences balance. The nearby summer vacation was the key driver for not charging off any unpaid balances and instead gets a good amount when the company shuts down for inventory purposes (Fishbein, 2005).
Reasons for the failure of paid absence plan
The paid absence of USA Motors failed because of several reasons, some of these reasons are as follows. The initial reason why the scheme failed was that the scheme failed to meet its required intention of increasing responsibility in workers (Cervone, 2006). The workers of the company simply took advantage of the initiative and, in the process, failed to deliver to the company’s expectation due to an increased rate of absence from the company’s task.
Because the workers took advantage of the plan to charge off payments without proper reason, the company was indeed increasing the cost of production without noticing. The initial intention of the plan was to reduce irresponsible absence and instead improve on the accountability of workers by asking them to report to the management if they wanted to be absent for a week or a given number of days.
Recommendations to USA Motors
In addition to the plan offered by Parks, I would add more guidelines that will have an overall impact on decreased unnecessary absenteeism by the company’s workers. I will start a bonus scheme of increased pay based on the rate of reporting in cases of absence and also the frequency of absenteeism (Baumeister, 2004). The major rationale for this proposal is the need to have a decrease in the frequency of absence from work and is responsible to report any intentions to be absent from work the following week or even day. The record will be used to monitor employee’s performance and consequently increase their income based on this information.
The reason why I believe this plan will work is simply that it uses the aspect of paid absenteeism and Parks’ proposed incentive plan. The logic here is, therefore, the need to bridge the gap that was created by these proposed plans. As much as there is a need to penalize the workers as per the provisions of the Parks plan of reducing 10 % over 6 months when there is an increased rate of absenteeism among the company’s workers, there is a need to reward them when their increase their absenteeism and also reporting whenever they are intending to be absent for some time.
This scheme will make the overall working environment and accountability among the company’s workers improved by a greater margin. The two proposed plans will be of great importance to the company as they will aid in decreasing the number of unreasonable absence as well as rewarding responsible workers who give a valid reason for their absence.
References
Baumeister, C. R., & Vohs, K. R. (2004). Handbook of self-regulation: Research, theory, and applications, New York, NY: Guilford Press, pp. 574.
Cervone, D. (2006).”Self-Regulation: Reminders and Suggestions from Personality Science”. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 55 (3), 333–385.
Fishbein, M., & Ajzen, I. (2005). Belief, attitude, intention, and behavior: An introduction to theory and research, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.