Absenteeism is the total man-shifts lost due to the absence of the total number of man-shifts scheduled to work. It, therefore, signifies unauthorized, unexplained, avoidable and wilful absence from work. Normal absence is excluded from this category as an employee usually takes leave of absence with prior permission of the authority to meet his own personal exigencies. Such exigencies may be on the ground of sickness, certain domestic eventualities, accidents, etc.
In all the cases, an employee may not take prior permission from his employer but may regularize his absence giving intimation within a scheduled period of absence. In most of the cases, if an employee remains absent from work for more than three consecutive days without any intimation, it is considered as wilful or unauthorized absence.
This, therefore, makes an employee liable to give intimation within three days from the date of his absence to regularize his leave. Absenteeism is, therefore, a wilful or habitual absence from work and not any other types of absence.
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Wilful or habitual absence contributes to the production loss and, therefore, it is a major problem for the management. The problem of absenteeism at macro level in India varies from industry to industry. Such rate normally varies from 7 per cent to 30 per cent in Mining, Textile, Jute, Plantation and Engineering industries.
Although there are a number of studies on the problems of absenteeism at unit level, the macro-level data on absenteeism in India is yet to be available to study the phenomenon both behaviourally and economically.
National Productivity Council carried out a survey to understand the magnitude of absenteeism and could find that personal sickness, family sickness; domestic and social exigencies are the most important factors for absenteeism in Indian industries. Other factors of absenteeism like drunkenness, poor interpersonal relationships, genuine transportation problems, need for leisure, etc., are responsible for relatively less percentage of absenteeism.
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No matter what may be the factors of absenteeism, any organization needs to ensure better working environment, good inter-personal relationships, less industrial fatigue, adequate welfare facilities, motivation, quick redress of the grievances for reducing the rate of absenteeism.
If all the above measures do not succeed, organizations need to educate workers and give counselling to make them aware of the effect of absenteeism, duly mentioning the financial loss sustained by them (in terms of wage loss) and problems, which the organization suffers.
Labour Turnover:
Labour turnover is the rate of change in the working hands of a particular organization during a given period. It, therefore, signifies the shifting of workforce from one organization to another and also the loss of manpower due to discharge, retirement, death, etc.
The rate of labour turnover is expressed in terms of accession and separation rate. Accession is addition to the workforce while separation is deletion from the workforce, for any of the reasons mentioned above. Labour turnover is a serious problem for the industry because of the following reasons:
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(a) High cost of recruitment to effect replacement
(b) High training cost
(c) Loss of supervisory and managerial time
(d) Slow rate of output of the new incumbents
(e) Damage to the plant and machinery
(f) High rate of scrap and waste, etc.
In India, due to less scope for job mobility, labour turnover and job change or job switch is not a serious problem, except in some particular occupations where knowledge and skill of workers are relatively more. In high profile jobs, turnover is more due to the increase of scope of job switch.
To encounter the problem of labour turnover, it is necessary for the organization to initiate same action as pointed out in the case of managing the problem of absenteeism earlier. However, a little more attention is required to sustain employee motivation by fulfilling both their intrinsic and extrinsic needs.