An Investigation on Absenteeism Rate of Sales Division in France, India and Brazil

Research title: An investigation on absenteeism rate of sales division in France, India and Brazil.

1.0 Introduction

Absenteeism is failure to report to work and it occurs when employees who were scheduled for work do not attend (Huczyunski and Fitzpatrick, 1989). The high rate of absenteeism may cause serious problem to an organization such as decrease in productivity and also increase in costs. Besides that, absenteeism will also affect performance of the other employees. Thus, it is important to identify the causes of absenteeism which can help the organization to decrease the absenteeism rate. So, this is a proposal business research on the factors which cause job absenteeism.

1.1 Problem statement

Absenteeism is a problem which most of the organization faced for many years, unfortunately the problem are still struggling and cannot solved effectively by the organization. High absenteeism rate may be costly to an organization even when the absent employee was not receives pay. This is because the work schedules will be delayed and cause inefficiency production. This study ensures that it will get a clear result about the factors which cause absenteeism in an organization.

1.2 Research objective

To investigate the factors that caused the absenteeism rate of sales team in International Conglomerates in France, India and Brazil from 2012 to 2016.

1.3 Research questions

1. Does stress on job have a significant influence on job absenteeism rate?
2. Does pay have a significant influence on job absenteeism rate?
3. Does job satisfaction have a significant influence on job absenteeism rate?
4. Does working condition have a significant influence on job absenteeism rate?         

1.4 Scope of study

The study is conducted to identify the various factors which cause employees absent in an organization. Only on the perception of the employees will be studies. The study will be important and helpful to the human resources of International Conglomerates to develop and identify employee’s attitude to minimizing absenteeism.

1.5 Company background

International Conglomerates (IC) was founded by Mr. Jason Mars in 1989. IC is a packaging firm which help their customer to design, evaluate and produce packages for their product. Headquarter of IC is located at Paris, France. After several years, the sales of the company was growth rapidly and Mr. Jason realized that there was a potential to internationalize his business. Thus, he start his first international company in Germany in year 1995. With his determination, the company was an immediate success and today there are nearly 21 International Conglomerates in world which include Brazil, United States, India, France and Germany. The company have a total number of 11,000 employees around the world which 8,200 is full time employees and others are part time employees. Lately, the company realized that the absence rates of sales teams in France, India and Brazil are above the industry average during the past 5 years. The number of employees in France is 55, India 123 and 35 in Brazil.

2.0 Literature review

The independent variable in this research are working condition, pay, job satisfaction and stress on job. Besides that, the dependent variable is job absenteeism. In general, the independent variable will significantly or insignificantly influence the dependent variable. This chapter is about literature related to factors which have impact on employee absenteeism by past researchers.

2.1 The impact of stress on job absenteeism

http://elibrary.msu.edu.my:2061/doi/pdfplus/10.1108/IJWHM-09-2013-0035

Past researchers Marzec et al. (2015) who conducted research about impact of changes in medical condition burden index and stress on absenteeism among employees of a US utility company. They collected data through sample size of 3,711 from US utility employees that participated in Health Risk Appraisals in year 2009 and 2010. They found that change in stress was associated with change in absence days. Besides that, they also state that stress have a significant influence impact on job absenteeism through regression analysis as the p value of stress is less than 0.05(95%).  

Dubey & Dasgupta (2015) have conducted a Study on Absenteeism & its Co-Relation with Job Satisfaction with Special Reference to IT Sector though questionnaire by 100 respondents from ‘Y Company’ ’ in Indore, India. Based on the result, 58% of the respondents were strongly agree that stress is the cause of absenteeism and 22% of the respondent were agreed. Most of the employees have agreed that their work is heavy which causes stress and due to stress they absent themselves to relax. According to the research, stress on job has the highest average which is 4.21 and has 1st rank among 10 causes of absenteeism in workplace.

However, Javed (2015) state that stress on job is not significant influence on job absenteeism in the research of factors effecting employee absenteeism through questionnaire by 30 employees of Zari Taraqiati Bank Limited Islamabad. As the result shows that significant level of stress is 0.171 which is greater than 0.05 which explained that stress have not significant influence on job absenteeism.

2.2 The impact of pay on job absenteeism

Furthermore, pay also have been reported as a factor that cause job absenteeism. Pfeifer (2010) state that pay have a significant influence on job absenteeism. He conducted the research by using data set which contains 62,774 monthly observations and 1,187 full-time white-collar workers in German company from January 1999 to December 2005. He found that employee will be less absent if they enjoy a higher absolute wage. As the result show the significant level of pay is less than 0.01(99%) which explain that pay have significant influence on job absenteeism.

Dubey & Dasgupta (2015) have conducted a Study on Absenteeism & its Co-Relation with Job Satisfaction with Special Reference to IT Sector. They collected data through questionnaire by 100 respondents from ‘Y Company’ ’ in Indore, India. The result shows that 50% of the employees strongly agreed and 27% of employees agree that pay is the causes of job absenteeism. The researchers found that employees will absent due to dissatisfaction with the pay as their work is stressful and they do not have any extra pay when they work overtime.

Another similar study by Silpa and Masthanamma (2015) on Symptoms and Preventions of Employee Absenteeism. The research conducted of 120 employees of Andhra Pradesh Mineral Development Corporation Limited in India through questionnaire. Based on the result, pay has a mean score of 3.835 and ranked 4th among 14 causes of job absenteeism.

2.3 The impact of job satisfaction on job absenteeism

Moreover, Thirulogasundaram and Sahu (2014) who conducted research about Job Satisfaction and Absenteeism interface in Corporate Sector state that job satisfaction have a significant influence of job absenteeism. They collected data through questionnaire from 200 respondents from Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited, Trichi, Tamilnadu. The result shows that the significant level is 0.05 which explain that job satisfaction have a significant influence on job absenteeism.