Human Resource Policy

Human Resource Policy: Absenteeism Human resource departments have multiple roles and responsibilities to help facilitate daily processes of an organization. These roles and responsibilities included but not limited to hiring, termination, work place injuries, American with Disabilities, and absenteeism. With the assistance of human resource departments, organizations develop policies for its roles and responsibilities. One such policy, absenteeism, will be furthered explained in this presentation. Slide three discusses the different types of absenteeism: scheduled, unscheduled, no-fault, compensated, and uncompensated. Examples of each are also given. Slide four discusses the impact of absenteeism. Absenteeism not only affects the quality of patient care because the workload of others increases but also affects teamwork. Peer’s are the ones that have to carry the brunt of the workload if another peer is absent. Increased workload and stress can lead to staff dissatisfaction. Staff become stressed and over worked which leads to a decrease in staff morale. Organizations see a financial impact of absenteeism. The financial impact relates to meeting staffing needs. Holy Spirit Hospital has its own effects of absenteeism. Slide five discusses the development of policies, staffing collaboration, and performance appraisals. Nursing Resource Managers provide support to unit managers with absenteeism on his or her units. Managers communicate daily, weekly, and monthly on staffing needs. Nursing Resource Managers are the ones that are responsible for filling staffing gaps. All employees are given performance appraisals at 90 days, 6 months, and yearly. Absenteeism is documented and a part of the performance appraisal. Unsatisfactory marks from absenteeism can lead to decreased or no pay increase. Slide six discusses interventions to prevent absenteeism. Teamwork is essential in the health care field. Units are encouraged to support each other. Activities outside of the organization as well as meaningful opportunities within the organization can assist employees with teamwork. Employees need to know that they are supported on their unit. Communication between leadership an employees is important. Workload needs to be appropriate without causing extra work and or stress. Employees need to have clarity of the organizations and units goals upon hire and yearly. All employees deserve recognition. This could be in the form of monetary or even simply showing respect for the employee. Lastly, a positive working environment promotes employees to come to work on his or her scheduled days. Absenteeism is decreased. The last two slides are the conclusion and references slides. Let us begin now.
Scheduled or Excused

Unscheduled or Unexcused

No-Fault

Compensated

Uncompensated What is absenteeism? Employment law describes absenteeism is when an employee is not present at work to perform his or her duties during a scheduled time frame. Absences can be classified into different types: scheduled, unscheduled, no-fault, compensated, and uncompensated. Scheduled absences are known and approved by the employer. Employers usually ask for notice of scheduled absences if appropriate. Vacations, funerals, jury duty, military reserves, medical appointments are considered scheduled absences. Unscheduled absences are not approved by the employer. A sickness, emergency (family, personal), transportation problems (care broke down, no ride to work), and in some cases a death in the family are examples of unscheduled absences. A no-fault absence is considered to be an unscheduled absence but is not counted against an employee. An example of a no-fault absence is when a state of emergency is called. Compensated absences are those absences that the employee is paid for without actually working his or her scheduled hours. Most employers call compensated absences paid-time-off (PTO). Absences that the employee is not paid for is uncompensated absences. If an employee does not have PTO or the absence is unscheduled the employee would not be compensated (U.S. Legal, 2001).
Impact of absenteeism

Quality of Patient Care Teamwork
Staff satisfaction Financial Impact The impact of an employee’s absence can be seen in many areas of an organization. Quality of patient care can decrease with unscheduled absenteeism. When an unscheduled absence occurs, employers struggle with finding replacements. Thirty four percent of unscheduled absences are because of illnesses. The other 64% are for family management or personal issues (Wolters Kluwer Law & Business, 2007). In the absence of an employee the team is incomplete. The time required for the others to complete his or her roles and responsibilities increases from shortage of staff. In high acuity, high volume units such as 7 Main at Holy Spirit Hospital, team members and teamwork are essential to providing quality patient care. Staff become dissatisfied when having to work short staffed. They also become dissatisfied when they have to work overtime in-order to complete their responsibilities for the shift. As mentioned before absenteeism affects all aspects of an organization, including the financial side. Organizations are having to pay the employee for time during an absence (if the employee has PTO and it was an excused absence) as well as paying for the staff to fill in for the absent employee. Long absences such as workman’s compensation and leave of absences put an additional strain on financial budgets of organizations. Holy Spirit Hospital has had to hire agency or even travel nurses for extended periods to fill the staffing gap because of unexpected long term absences. Agency and traveling nurses are expensive to hire.
Effects to Holy Spirit Hospital
Development of Policies
Staffing Collaboration Daily Weekly Monthly
Performance Appraisals 90 Day 6 Month Yearly Monetary Reward
Interventions to absenteeism
Teamwork
Leadership
Workload
Clarity
Recognition
Physical work environment Absenteeism is something that we have all seen at some time or another. The effects of absenteeism are not only at the unit level but also can affect the entire organization. Staff morale becomes low and administration becomes frustrated. All this can lead to a negative working environment. Organizations such as Holy Spirit Hospital have developed policies and procedures to handle absenteeism. Employees should be encouraged to have scheduled time off. Organizations have also developed benefits that include paid time off. It is important that employees provide adequate time to calling in so that appropriate staffing can be assembled. Several interventions can be developed to ease the amount of absences. Organizations as a whole, as well as the unit, and individuals need to assist each other in building a positive work environment. Many factors can be controlled so that absences are not high. It is up to each person to do his or her part to make the team work. It is up to each of us to make sure that we do have a positive working environment.

Holy Spirit Hospital. (2010). Human Resource Department Handbook.
Schalk, D. J., Bijl, M. P., Halfens, R. G., Hollands, L., & Cummings, G. G. (2010). Interventions aimed at improving the nursing work environment: a systematic review. Implementation Science, 534- 44. doi:10.1186/1748-5908-5-34
U.S. Legal. (2001). Absenteeism Law and Legal Definition. Retrieved from http://definitions.uslegal.com/a/absenteeism/
Wolters Kluwer Law & Business. (2007). Absenteeism survey issue: HR ideas & trends. Retrieved from http://hr.cch.com/products/productid-4385.asp