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Introduction
Organizations are usually complex units. They are associated with many issues that have to be carried out in a given manner in order to achieve individual and overall organizational success. Some of the major aspects in organizations include the fixed and current assets and the human resources. Human resource plays a great role in organizations.
They facilitate other aspects in an organization through manipulation to achieve the desired results. Employees performance is affected by various things some of them being physical while others are psychological.
For this reason, they ought to be treated in an appropriate manner to enhance performance. This piece of work looks at absenteeism as a psychology related problem in an organization. The organization of study will be Eastman Kodak.
Background Information
Eastman Kodak is a well known multinational corporation / company in the film and imaging industry. It is an info imaging organization that is based in the United States of America. It has, however, spread its operations far and wide to eight major countries, that is, Germany, Canada, Mexico, France, U.S., Australia, Brazil and the United Kingdom.
Its products and services are also marketed by subsidiary companies to people in more than 150 countries. Due to its large size, Eastman Kodak has a large workforce and requires a lot of coordination in order to achieve success.
Over the recent past, the company has experienced some problems in the human resource department, an aspect that has raised concern due poor performance by the employees which in turn affects the productivity of the company.
The major problem is, however, absenteeism among the workforce which presents the challenge of meeting the employees’ desires for instance in regard to work-life balance (Kodak, 2011).
Absenteeism in Eastman Kodak
Absenteeism entails the habitual behavior of failing to attend to a duty or obligation. It is a problem that has been there for a long period for as long as organizations have existed. In olden days, absenteeism was taken as a sign of poor personal performance or an extremely bad mistake performed by an employee towards an employer.
It was perceived to be a pure management issue. In the recent past, however, absenteeism has been discovered to be a sign that is related to either, medical, social or even psychological problem which is linked to adjustment to work.
Absenteeism is generally perceived to be a deviant workplace behavior and thus negative attributions. For this reason, it is subject to social control and it usually results to conflict in the work place (Eggert, 2002).
There are various causes or factors that lead to absenteeism among employees. The major factors include lack of job satisfaction and poor treatment where the employees feel unappreciated. Poor working conditions could also result in work place stress which in turn lead to absenteeism due to lack of morale to carry on.
Another factor is employees’ poor image on an organization or the way in which employees perceive their organization. Poor organization’s perception among the employees can hinder their performance in terms of work attendance.
Other factors include poor management or leadership and lack of self motivation, serious illness and accidents, boredom on the job, personal problems, work stress and poor physical fitness among others (Eggert, 2002).
According to the withdrawal model of psychology, absenteeism is a mechanism that represents an employee withdrawal from working conditions that are not satisfying. There is a positive relationship between absenteeism and job satisfaction.
Solution to the Psychology Related Problem
A high degree of absenteeism in an organization is usually linked to poor morale.
Despite the fact that absenteeism is an extremely disturbing issue in organizations and Eastman Kodak in particular, there exist some strategies that should be applied in an effort to get a solution or rather avoid absenteeism. Different parties should play different roles in fighting the problem of absenteeism.
Some of the general measures that should be adopted by the management include development and implementation of appropriate absence policies. The policies should have a clear distinction between absences that have genuine reasons and those that are as a result of indiscipline.
This will avoid instances where employees feel obliged to go to work even when they can not perform, for instance, when sick just to avoid some severe consequences. This could cause greater absenteeism and reduced productivity due to working in poor health. The policies should also offer some guidelines on reporting in advance incase one really can not make it to work.
Motivation has a great impact in developing employees’ moods and emotions which may determine the level of their absenteeism. This is because employee feel appreciated and well represented and hence the urge to even work harder to improve their individual performance and thus that of the organization as a whole.
According to the expectancy theory of motivation, employees usually tend to work better if they believe that hard work will lead to better performance and that better performance will lead to rewards. Rewards, therefore, reduce the level of absenteeism among the employees (DuBrin, 2008).
The element of equity also plays a fundamental role in improving employee’s performance. Employees will be discouraged if they feel that they are being discriminated against.
This may increase the level of absenteeism in the workplace. On the other hand, employees will be satisfied when they believe that their compensation is equal to that given to others who make similar contribution in the organization.
An appropriate organizational culture bonds employees together and facilitates realization of organizational goals. This close bond also motivates employees to work towards the realization of an organization’s objectives and goals.
This ensures that the level of absenteeism is minimized. Leaders should come up with an organization culture that encourages employees’ attendance in the workplace. Since a culture is difficult to change once engraved in employees’ minds, it is important that the leaders be careful while creating organizational cultures.
Strong cultures are associated with innovation, growth and high level of employees’ attendance (Robbins and Judge, 2010).
Another effort of dealing with absenteeism is adoption of organizational change to influence behavior. It is a good practice to facilitate necessary changes in an organization in order to promote employee commitment in the work place.
In the modern business world, the level of competitiveness of an organization is determined by its ability to handle necessary changes within an organization. The process of change is not always easy. It involves adjustments in an organization which may affect day to day activities.
Change is associated with numerous challenges, for example, employee resistance to change. Therefore, the process needs a lot of attention in order to come up with effective changes which will invoke employees’ support rather than resistance. The employees should be fully involved in the changes to develop a sense responsibility in implementing the changes.
Good interpersonal skills in an organization are also crucial. Interpersonal skills play a significant role in reducing the level of employee absenteeism. This is both between the leaders and employees as well as among employees themselves.
Good interpersonal skills promote mutual understanding within an organization. This promotes good relationships among the employees hence enhancing their understanding and job satisfaction.
Leaders must take time in communicating with employees to sensitize them on the impact of absenteeism on the performance of the organization. Such interaction will help in developing a sense of responsibility among the employees thus avoid absenteeism.
Employee compensation also helps in reducing absenteeism. Compensation is the reward given to employees for the amount of work they have done in a specific time period. Employees could be compensated through various ways. For instance, there is a need to have over time regulation and payment.
This will help in compensating employees for working for many hours than expected. This will help in reducing the level of absenteeism in the work place. For example, employees will be encouraged to attend to work even if it means working for long hours because they expect compensation at the end of the day.
Contrary, employees may fail to report to work in case they expect working overtime without compensation (Aamodt, 2009).
Human resource managers can also influence the conduct of the employees in the work place. The managers can control employees in such a way that there is minimal level of absenteeism. This could be through development and compensation of the employees.
This helps in motivating the employees. Human resource managers also have an important role in hiring employees. The human resource managers are supposed to carry out a critical examination of the previous performance of the candidates.
This will help in detection of the vices like work place absenteeism among the recruits thus assisting in elimination of candidates who have a tendency of absenteeism in the workplace. By so doing, the company will be able to hire only those employees with a good record of job attendance.
Employee empowerment is another crucial aspect in reducing the level of absenteeism. Employee empowerment allows making of independent decisions by the employees concerning an organization. This encourages employees to work towards the realization of organizational goals.
It creates a sense of identity since employees will have authority to make some decisions in the organization. The employees, therefore, feel valued and become motivated to improve on their productivity. This boosts job satisfaction and thus an improved level of attendance (Aamodt, 2009).
Some of the measures that have been taken by Eastman Kodak to avoid the issue of absenteeism among the employees are directed towards establishing a work- life balance so as to foster job satisfaction.
They include provision of part time work rather than having employees working on a full time basis, allowing for job sharing to avoid overworking and monotony, compressed work weeks, telecommuting or flex -place arrangements where people could work at the comfort of their home as well as flextime.
The policy parameters that exist to allow for success of the above named measures state that in the event of inability to report to work, an employee have to complete an application, get permission from the supervisor and ensure that the arrangement will not affect the organization negatively.
All employees regardless of position, terms of employment or geographical location are entitled to ask for any flexible work arrangement.
Adequate information regarding the flexible work arrangements should always be made available to all employees. Supervisors and managers were also impacted with relevant knowledge on flexible work arrangement.
The flexible work arrangements at Eastman Kodak have proved to be beneficial to both the supervisors and other employees. Effective relationships and communication have been attributed to this success (Workplace Flexibility, 2010).
The management should take a positive approach towards solving the problem of absenteeism. The employees should be appreciated, motivated and cared for. Apart from the specific measures that have been undertaken by Eastman Kodak, the above named strategies ought to be incorporated to allow for success in coming up with an absolute solution of absenteeism in the organization.
Conclusion
Human resources play a significant role in determining the success of an organization. The productivity of other resources used in an organization depends on the human resources. For instance, other resources used in production in an organization like machines significantly depend on the human resource control.
Absenteeism affects the employees’ performance negatively. It could be caused by various factors for instance work stress and job dissatisfaction.
An organization should invest in all possible strategies aimed at solving the problem of absenteeism to avoid the effects associated with it. Proper working conditions and motivation should be offered to foster job satisfaction and thus better performance.
Reference List
Aamodt, G.M. (2009). Industrial/Organizational Psychology: An Applied Approach. 6th Ed. New York: Cengage Learning.
DuBrin J. (2008). Essentials of Management. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.
Eggert, M. (2002). The Controlling Absenteeism Pocketbook. UK: Pocketbooks
Kodak. (2011). Eastman Kodak Company Equal Opportunity Employment Policy (EOE). Web.
Robbins, S. and Judge, T. (2010). Organizational Behavior. New York: Prentice Hall.
Workplace Flexibility (2010). Flexible Work Arrangements: Selected Case Studies. Web.
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