Investigating Absence Management in Food Industry: A Research Report

This report investigates the causes of absenteeism in food industry companies, particularly BM Food Manufacturers, as a component of strategic human resource management. It highlights the impact of employee absenteeism on organizational productivity and associated costs, often stemming from job dissatisfaction. The research reviews existing literature on absence management methods, identifies current practices at BM Food Manufacturers, and proposes contemporary strategies for implementation. A follow-up review is suggested to assess the effectiveness of these methods. The report also addresses the implications of absenteeism, such as production losses and unequal workload distribution, emphasizing the role of managers in mitigating these issues. The research employs qualitative methods to understand the factors contributing to absenteeism, including personal factors like age, tenure, and gender, as well as organizational factors such as working conditions and job satisfaction. Cross-cultural issues and the impact of wages and work-time characteristics are also considered as potential drivers of employee absence.

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ABSSENCE MANAGEMENT IN FOOD INDUSTRY
Student
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Tutor
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Executive Summary:
This project intends to investigate the causes of absenteeism in companies which is a part of
strategic human resource management. The importance of absenteeism of employees has become
an issue because it affects the productivity of the organization as well as the organization incurs a
cost of absence. The reason of such behaviour by the resources of the companies is mostly because
of dissatisfaction of work. This paper looks into the various ways used to conduct research upon this
issue and on finding out the results, some recommendations that might be of assistance to the
organization. The issues associated with the absenteeism in an organization can lead to the loss in
the production and in turn, revenue. It also affects the workforce by unequal distribution of
workload, which should be taken care of by the managers of the company. This paper also talks
about such steps that can be taken by the managers to avoid the loss by the company.

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Table of Contents
Executive Summary:..............................................................................................................................2
Table of Contents..................................................................................................................................3
1. Introduction to Research:..............................................................................................................4
1.1 Aim and Objective:......................................................................................................................4
1.2 Key Stakeholders:........................................................................................................................5
1. Literature Review:.........................................................................................................................6
3 Critique of Literature Review:.............................................................................................................9
3.1 Justification of Research Selected:...............................................................................................9
3.2 Advantages and Disadvantages of Research selected...............................................................11
3.3 How could this be applied to BM Food Manufacturers Private Limited....................................12
4. Proposed Presentation of Findings..................................................................................................13
4.1 Line Graphs................................................................................................................................14
4.2 Bar Charts..................................................................................................................................14
5. Conclusion:......................................................................................................................................15
5.1 Recommendation:.....................................................................................................................15
References:..........................................................................................................................................17
References:..........................................................................................................................................17
Appendix.............................................................................................................................................20

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1. Introduction to Research:
1.1 Aim and Objective:
There has been many researches that have been conducted to determine the relations of
Human Resource Manager and the employees of a company. In this context, it is the duty of the
Human Resource Management to consider and solve the problems faced by the employees. This is
because the problems can lead to a loss in the finance of an organization. Absence Management is
the process of reduction of absenteeism of employees due to factors of sickness and injury
strategically through procedures. The policies are required to be communicated properly to the
employees and managers by the Human Resource managers so that they can have an effective
impact. Absence management is required by organizations to communicate about their policies that
cover the absence of the employees. It is an integral aspect of constructing effective employee
relations by the company the organization in focus here is BM Food Manufacturers.
Absence of employees in a company is not considered beneficial to the organization since it
results to the loss in production and funds. Several researches have been conducted on absence
management in many industries but not on the food production industry. It is important for any
organization in the food production sector to take appropriate actions on this issue so that they can
decrease the damage caused to them. At the same time, good absence management policies also
help the Human Resource Management to build good relations with the employees.
The aim of this research is to suggest new and effective ways in which absence of employees
can be managed more efficiently amongst the staff and management team, focussing on reports of
case study of various companies of the food production sector.
The research objectives are as follows:

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i. Review of the current literature around absence management methods.
ii. Identification and review of current Absence Management methods within the company of
BM Food Manufacturers Private Limited.
iii. Proposal and recommendation of contemporary and dynamic ways by which Absence
Management Methods can be used and implemented.
iv. A follow up review of the methods after twelve months of implementation and inclusion and
reporting to the senior management of the company.
1.2 Key Stakeholders:
BM Food Manufacturers Private Limited was established in the year 2006. The entity has the
capability of manufacturing a wide range of frozen products throughout Britain. BM Food
Manufacturers Private Limited has two chief processing plants. The first one is located in Bristol and
the other one outside Cardiff. Fresh products are delivered twice a week to all the clients across the
country. The mission of the company is to introduce upheaval, manufacture, dispense and market
food products of magnificent quality generated in an environment that is controlled and using the
freshest and finest of ingredients. The mission is the creation of a workplace that pays respect and
value to the population from disparate backgrounds that enables all working employees to reach
their maximum capacity.
Key Stakeholders Level of Interest Reason of Interest
Customers Medium The most important stakeholder
in a business is their customers,
they are the one for whom the
products are manufactured and
acquired.
Investors High The investors are the one who

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provide money with which the
business goes forward.
Employees Medium The most important resource for
a company.
Interest Groups High The various groups such as the
vendors, suppliers all are
important stakeholder to the
business.
1. Literature Review:
Theories about attendance of the employees and absenteeism at wok organizations have
been existent for many years. The two main sets of theories and models associated with the issues
of absenteeism deals with it on two fronts. On the one hand, absenteeism is considered from the
perspective of what organizations do to retain the existing employees including compensation and
dismissal policies, promotion strategies. The other theoretical model concerns the policies the
organizations employ to ensure that competent and highly motivated workers get attracted to the
company. The theories work on the premise that the factors that retain existing employees on the
organization and the factors attracting good employees to the organization play a big role in the
employees’ tendency to be away from work. The two theories are applied during comparative
studies when the researcher are interested in determining whether similar factors in different
organizations affect the people in the same way. The theories are applied in comparing organizations
with high absenteeism rate to others with low levels of the same. For instance, if an employee
moves from a company low in absenteeism rate to one with high rates, his or her individual
absenteeism should shoot up to be in accord with the ones of the current company. If they do not

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rise, then individual factors such as employee’s work ethic and loyalty can be taken as having a more
profound impact than the company’s factors. In general, most employees’ absence drops or rises
depending on the average absentee rates of the organization they move to.
The main causes of Absenteeism can be grouped into two: factors within the individual employee
and factors within the organization (Gangai16 2014). Individual’s contribution to Absenteeism rates
range from issues under his or her control to issues that cannot be wholly blamed on the individual.
Personal factors affecting absenteeism include Age, tenure, gender, and marital status.
Studies indicate that young people are more likely to be absent compared to their older
counterparts while the older generation workers take longer to report back to work compared to the
young people. At the same time, employees with longer tenures tend to feel ownership to the
company and are likely to exhibit fewer instances of absenteeism. On the other hand, because it is
difficult to lay off longer tenured employees irrespective of their behaviour some might take
advantage of this fact to be absent from their workplaces more often. Gender influences
absenteeism in relation to the roles that the concerned people play outside the organization.
Married men tend to show less absenteeism rates compared to their single counterparts and
married women. This can be attributed to the fact that most married men have stable lives relative
to single men. However, in married women with children, the absenteeism goes higher due to their
caregiving roles for the children. In general single males and females exhibit the highest absenteeism
rates (Singh, 2009).
Organization factors affecting absenteeism levels include: working conditions,
supervision, and job satisfaction. Adverse working conditions, poor supervision, stressful and
monotonous work excessive working hours will all contribute to lower job satisfaction metrics with
the resultant increases in absenteeism. Stress at the workplace is positively correlated with higher
rates of absenteeism (Sneddon, Mearns and Flin 2013). Stress at the place of work can result from
various factors, with role conflict and role ambiguity being the main culprits. Role ambiguity results

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when the worker is unable clearly discern what is expected of him or her, a function of poor job
design. On the other hand role conflict arises in situations where the job expectations are clear, but
the conflict with each other. People in such stressful working conditions will be absent from their
workstations more often compared to their counterparts who have better working conditions.
The theories have often regarded absenteeism in an elaborated manner and considered several
reasons for absence. According to (Gosselin, Lemyre and Corneil 2013), sickness has been observed
as one of the several reasons for absence but has not been given proper attention. The studies
conducted on the concept have considered absenteeism majorly from two angles. Apart from that,
the absence of the employees in the workplaces is significantly attached to the external factors like
the differences in opinion among the employees or the cultural differences among the employees
which is barring the effective and fruitful communication among the employees. According to
Mowday, Porter and Steers (2013), the organizations are observing significant amount of issues
regarding the decision making of the organization on whether they will allow the employees to
conduct in their own way or there will be specified mode of operation prescribed by the
organization. It is observed that the employees who prefers to do the job in independent way or in
the way which they prefer, are facing the issues in a more evident as almost every organization is
striving towards having a specified method of business conduction. The individual mode of
conduction are observed to have significant amount of conflicts with the specified method of the
organizations. Stoetzer et al. (2014) states that an in depth analysis of the cross cultural issues will
portray the fact that the major reason behind the absence of the employees is the dissatisfaction
generated from the cross cultural differences among the employees. Several critics of the cross
cultural communication acknowledge that the employees of different cultures face significant
amount of difficulty in integrating among them as the language or the cultural assimilation may not
be there. This is a notable reason which affects the fruitful communication among the employees
which is highly desired in cases of effective team work. In such cases where the integration is not
achieved among all the employees owing to the reason of cultural differences, are observed to have

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significant detrimental effects in the operations as a team. These creates considerable amount of
dissatisfaction among the employees as the fails to deliver in the desired manner. Apart from that
the study of Cucchiella, Gastaldi and Ranieri (2014) confirms that the wages and the work-time
characteristics is a major reason behind the absenteeism. The functionalistic approach defined
absenteeism as a deviant behaviour that can be attributed to unsatisfactory working conditions,
whereas the analytical approach defined is as a social conflict between works and employers.
Absence from work was segregated to absence for the reason of illness and voluntary absence.
3 Critique of Literature Review:
3.1 Justification of Research Selected:
The qualitative research methods are usually used to determine the rate of absenteeism and
the factors causing it. This is due to the different opinions of different individuals that are neither
quantitative in nature nor can they be determined by quantitative methods of research. (Siukola
2013) used methods such as questionnaires, collecting data from sick absence register, group
interviews and senior programmes. Collection of data by the questionnaire method is considered to
be the most common method of conducting qualitative research. It has certain advantages.
Absent Management in food industry
The concepts of absenteeism was investigated by (Gangai16 2014)and were divided into four
categories mainly. The first category suggested if the satisfaction is high with the company and the
immediate work situation, then the rate of absenteeism is low. Secondly, if the rate of satisfaction is
high but low with the work situation then the rate of absenteeism is high. However, if the level of
satisfaction is low with the company, but high with the situation of work, there is a high rate of
absenteeism.
According to (Cucchiella, Gastaldi and Ranieri 2014), absenteeism is defined as occasional
absenteeism from work by habit for several days, which is generally rationalized by a medical

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certificate but actually because of personal interests and poor sense of duty. In addition, it is also
defined as mediocrity, lack of interest in problems of political and social in nature or on issues of
customary interest. The pessimistic meanings of these definitions can be noticed which highlight the
misuse of the personal absences as opposed to the interest of the society or the company. It is the
negative side of the problem that is usually underlined even though it is a necessity and justified in
several instances. It is also a right, which is obtained luckily after years of struggles of the working
class. The authors have defined absenteeism into various expressions, which are permitted by law.
One of the factors that can be considered as absenteeism is vacation, which is a period of relaxation
from work. In addition, day off or absenteeism from employment for a definite period that is
planned from earlier with the employer is also considered as absenteeism. Strike or the collective
avoidance of work by the working employees for the purpose of protecting their interests of
economy, politics and union. Leaves or suspension of work by the employees to reconnect the
position of the employer with his commitments to the public or the occurrence of issues related to
self or family.
Comparison with other industry
The major forms of absenteeism in the food production sector are sick leaves. However,
there are other factors why employees are absent from work. Absence Management is the tool of
Human Resource Management that investigates into these factors to introduce policies convenient
to the employees to reduce the rate of absenteeism in any company including BM Food
Manufacturers Private Limited. The term sickness absence if interpreted literally stands for absence
from work due to sickness. In other words, a disease proves to be a problem of impaired ability to
work. In other industries, it is also same, however, the work is not interrelated.
Impaired work ability and disease are interrelated even though there are other factors,
which can affect the ability to work. The anomaly is not simple because work ability along with
health are continuous. Whereas, from the perspective of sickness absence management, it is a

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differentiated concept that is, an employee is either present or absent. Furthermore, considering
these factors, sickness absence can also be termed as disability absence.
3.2 Advantages and Disadvantages of Research selected
Questionnaires are one of the most affordable and convenient methods of collecting
responses (Rowley 2014). The companies generally utilize this method of data collection because
this method does not incur expenses on the company depending on then ways of administration.
The method is immensely practical in nature because the questions are usually open ended or
multiple choice type. The conducting person or organizations get their results at a considerably low
amount of time. The scalability of the surveys is huge. It is possible to gather information from a
large number of audiences through this method. Considering the advancement in technology today,
the scale is only inflating. The analyses are practical in nature and give realistic outcomes or
predictions of outcome. This is because the research is not based on assumptions but facts collected
from actual people.
However, there are disadvantages of questionnaires too (Murgan 2015). The respondents
might not be completely honest while answering the questions. This influences the research and
drives it in the wrong direction. It is difficult to interpret the thought of the respondent while
researching using a questionnaire because often the questions are of multiple choice types. In
addition, some of the questions may even be hard to analyse. Open ended questions for example
cannot be quantified and requires a human review. Furthermore, some questions those are open
ended, produce data beyond the capacity of analysis. The respondents may have a hidden agenda
behind answering the questions. Their response is bound to influence the research and can affect
the analysis. In addition, the respondents often skip questions while answering them. The skipping of
questions often fail to generate the idea of the analysis and can also result to incompletion in the
data collection method which eventually affects the direction and purpose of the analysis.

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3.3 How could this be applied to BM Food Manufacturers Private Limited
Work stress was investigated and analysed by Cooper in his work stress model (Sneddon,
Mearns and Flin 2013). It is conferred here as an opinion to structure the determining factors used in
the current study. The work stress model of Cooper includes the concept of various sources of stress
in the environment. These sources of stress merge together with the personal characteristics of the
individual and lead to stress related conclusion. These symptoms can be of ill health as a result of
occupation and more possible diseases. These sources of stress can be present at work environment
or even in the interface of home and work. This model by Cooper suggests individual symptoms
along with symptoms of the organization such as high absenteeism rates. These are contemplated to
affect the individual suffering from it. There are majorly two aims in the background of the work
stress model to understand stress at work. The first objective is to identify possible adverse
conditions of work and uplift the quality of working life of the employees. The second aim is to
classify individuals who are the best fits for the job role and its conditions of work. The sources of
stress at work involve factors inherent to the job, the role in the organization, development of
career, relationships at work and structure of the organization and atmosphere. Along with this the
cultural differences among the employees is also a significant issue which the research is able to
establish. The differences among the culture of the employees is highly influential and is a major
factor which leads to the stress of the employees. The employees who are considered to be the
outsiders of the culture are observed to face significant issue in getting integrated to the employees
of the host culture and that creates significant issue in the effective team work. Along with this the
generation of the work stress is visible as the proper integration is not achievable and that creates
significant faults in case of the proper execution of their operations. Hence one of the most crucial
factor which has significant detrimental effects in the smooth conduction of the business operation
is the issue of cultural differences. Along with this, another important factor in the creation of the
job stress of the employees is the work time characteristics of the organizations. The research is able
to define that the professionals are usually subjected to significant amount of stress generated from