Sick Leave Abuse: The Action of Employees in Organization
Attendance and Punctuality
Every company or organization aims to receive a good performance and competitive advantage in the market. Corporate leaders believe that a good record employee of attendance and efficient working standards is a remarkable standard pro for the firm’s success. The employees, on the other hand, are given their own rights to receive their compensation and other benefits such as paid leaves and insurance. The firm is looking forward to see all their employees working in harmony without any conflict towards their schedule, towards the co-workers, and towards to their managers or supervisors.
From the signed contract of the employees, the attendance and punctuality involves the conformance to established work hours, break and lunch periods. The aspect of punctuality is required in different work activities and timely completion of requests for leaves. Every employee should complete the documentation of his requests and if applicable, the use of the sick leave should be use properly (2004).
According to the labor law, the sick leave is a necessary benefit for all of the employees. If it is not offered for the employees, the leaders only allow the acceleration of health problems and illness which in turn, lowers the productivity and morale. Despite the pressure of perfecting the attendance to improve the productivity and efficiency, the employees still needs to acquire their sick leaves for their own health security (2002). But the abuse of this right is interpreted by most of the organizations as part of losing their dollars.
Employee’s Action
The behavior of an employee such as arriving late, exceeding hours of breaks, leaving the work early, and absenteeism is not a desirable indication of being a productive employee, even though if he meet all the requirements. The basis of the employee performance is not only through the completed work, but also in evaluating the attendance. Most of the time, the human resources reviews every employee sick leave records, long-term illnesses and other circumstances beyond the control of the employee. If the human resource staff noticed a very uncommon pattern of absences or leaves, it is considered as a suspected abuse of his right. The basic solution applied here is counseling or open discussion with the concerned employee or giving leave restriction such as limitation in acquiring their privilege. Usually, the company acts strictly if the same offense happened several times and the managers or supervisors decide any appropriate discipline for this kind of behavior ( 2004).
Part of the availing the sick leave is usually lasts from three days or a week and the company needs a proper documentation for it. It is part of the company guidelines to complete the requests before taking immediate action for the requested leave. The purpose of the documentation is to record all the leave availed by the employee and detects the presence of any sick leave that has been misuse or abused.
Abuse
It is very alarming on the side of the organization to notice that most of his people are missing during the business engagements and there is a presence of increasing absences. The unscheduled absences of the employees have many reason and reflects on the costs wages and salaries which is a company loss if all the paid salary are wasted and the company did not gain any benefit from it. Frequent absences leads to missing the deadlines, high costing because of the overtime if the employees wished to finish his work, lost sales, sinks the employee morale toward the workplace, and lower productivity.
The pattern of suspected sick leave abuse appears on the employee who fails to submit the requirements on documentation such as the request form or advance notice, absent report, or medical certification (2002). The high number of absences, late-comings and early departure exploits the company’s essential element which is the time. During those hours, an individual can perform his duty on time being not bothered by any missing part of his work. If the person abused his right to acquire the leaves or shown the sign of tardiness and absenteeism, he tends to haste and worry over his unfinished tasks.
Reasons
It is important for the organization to identify the root problem of absenteeism or abused sick leaves. Aside from that, many organizations have implemented a sick leave incentive programs and policies to discourage the action of the employees towards their work and aiming to maintain an excellent attendance records (2002).
Absenteeism refers to an absent for any reason, including the paid and unpaid sick leaves, emergency leave, and absence without official leave but not the vacation leave. There are many related reasons for the employee’s uncontrollable absences. Employees have a broad choice of reasons but not all of them are entitled to accommodate them all because the manager might get notice, the pattern of his employees’ absences. Employees might be reason the following: illness, injury or family leave. The company might also enforce the leave for their employees because of their poor work ethics, undesirable or inflexible work shifts or schedule conflicts. And the ultimate reason that may appear is the employees’ feelings such as alienation or unimportance, low morale due to other cancelled legal leaves, lack of systematic attendance, and conflicts in different relationships in workplace (2005).
Recommendations
Absenteeism and abused sick leaves are common to most of the employees that do not feel the importance of their job or their role within the organization. Often, they promote their absences on their co-workers and attract them to abandon their duty. This is not a good part of creating an ideal workforce. Most of the companies’ prepared applicable actions where they can introduce to the employees the essence of their work and made them realize that they are an important part of the corporate. Sometimes, lack of motivation and lonely office ambience made the employee wearing him down.
It is advisable to control the use of leave (2005). A manager needs to place a right judgment towards the employee before placing him on the controlled leave. If during the allotted time given and he did not improve his routine therefore, the manager should start the action in accordance to the corporate guidelines. If the counseling did not work, it is better to give the employee a memorandum of agreement. The human resource or the supervisor should monitor any progress and provide warnings, punishment, salary deductions, or forced leave if ever there is no improvement on his attitude in managing his time.
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