Workplace Absenteeism And Turnover

1477 Words6 Pages
Absenteeism and Turnover It’s Monday morning and the manager arrives at his workplace. The building is deserted, a ghost building…yet there are signs that suggest there was once life here. No this isn’t the start of a science fiction or horror movie, but is actually set every day in corporate America. With higher than ever absenteeism and turnover rates, though exaggerated in the previous sentence, this epidemic is soaring to one of the biggest heartaches and problem for managers. But for many people, including some managers, there is just not much awareness about this subject. Also if noted, not many managers know what to do in order to motivate their employees to enjoy their job and like to come to the workplace. To begin, what is absenteeism and turnover? Absenteeism is described as frequent absences from the workplace while turnover is the rate at which an employer gains, and then loses employees. When it comes down to his, high absenteeism or turnover can be harmful to a company’s productivity in the sense of either losing skilled being replaced by novice workers, requiring increase amount of manpower to complement the staff needs, loss of revenues from not meeting project schedules, administrative cost to recruit/process/train new employees, lost of efficiency, underutilization of tolls or equipment, misallocation of skills and talents of other employees, increased overtime and employee fatigue, or poor office morale. “Turnover rates of more than 200% annually, not including reductions in the work force, have been reported. Concurrently, absenteeism has been observed as high as 20%.” (Roundtable, 1989) When looking at the financial side of high turnovers, the numbers are truly stacked up. Another influence of absenteeism is workplace depression. John Reh claims that “Ten to twenty percent of the US workforce gets clinically depressed each year. That
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