Acting the part: how social and organisational factors shape managers' actions towards employees with repeated short-term sickness absence

Abstract

PurposeThe aim of the study was to understand the social and organisational factors in the workplace that shape managers' actions and attitudes towards workers with repeated short-term sickness absence.Design/methodology/approachThis was a qualitative interview study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 19 managers at 15 different workplaces. The analysis had an abductive approach, using thematic analysis which focused on the latent content of managers attitudes towards employees with repeated short-term sickness absence.FindingsResults indicate that the managers' views of people on short-term sick leave shift and move through several phases, which was analysed as they were acts in a play, where their given roles are prescribing which actions to take given the available resources for acting these parts. These acts depict an increasingly controlling attitude, where the sick leave is ultimately seen as an individual problem best managed by repressive tactics.Originality/valueRole theory offers the possibility to analyse managers' attitudes and behaviours by considering the workplace and the manager-employee relationship as regulated by norms and organisational factors.

Nurses Caring for Older Adult Family Members: Disclosing Caregiving to Work Supervisors

“…24 Employees may also benefit from additional workshops by their organization about services for DDCGs as part of an overall overview of the organization's health care/wellness benefits. In addition, the role of organizational norms and what is viewed as acceptable behavior by supervisors 25 may also be important factors to consider in future research on supervisor-DDCG relationships and disclosure. It is also possible that supervisors may not perceive family supportive behaviors as part of their job role, 26 which may lead to feelings of helplessness from employees.…”

Predicting disability retirement among Abu Dhabi police using multiple measure of sickness absence

“…On the other hand, the most common measures of sickness absence used in most studies were the total number of days of sickness absence and the medical diagnosis of sickness absence. Total number of days of sickness absence generally predicted disability retirement [ 5 ]. The risk of disability retirement increased in individuals with sickness absence due to mental, musculoskeletal, nervous and gastrointestinal diseases but the findings regarding those with sickness absence due to cardiovascular and respiratory diseases were mixed [ 8 ].…”

“…Other less commonly used sickness absence measures include the number of sickness absence spells and the average length of sickness absence spell. The findings of the two studies which evaluated the association using the number of sickness absence spells were contradictory [ 3 , 9 , 22 ] while the average length of sickness absence spell was a predictor of disability retirement [ 3 , 5 ]. More studies are needed to provide further insights into the relationship between the number of sickness absence spells and the average length of sickness absence spells and the risk of disability retirement.…”

“…Avoiding disability retirement has become a great public health concern for many countries worldwide. This is because of the negative effect it has on the quality of life of those granted disability retirement and their families [ 3 ] as well as the extensive utilization of healthcare resources irrespective of causes of morbidity [ 4 , 5 ]. For instance, owing to sickness absence, 141.4 million working days were lost in the UK in 2018, 1 equating to 4.3 days lost per worker [ 6 ].…”

“…Secondly, despite the high number of reported sickness absences, occupational injuries and early retirement in the police force [ 18 , 20 , 21 ], none of the previous studies investigated the relationship between sickness absence and disability retirement in this occupational group. Thirdly, few studies have analyzed number of sickness spells to investigate disability retirement [ 9 , 22 ] or average length of sickness absence spells [ 3 , 5 , 10 ] as a risk marker for future disability retirement. Therefore, more research needs to be carried out to provide further insights into these relationships.…”