Lack of Consequences or Rewards-Affecting

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Lack of Consequences or Rewards

Lateness is more likely to occur without written and verbal policies that threaten to lowerpay or terminate perpetually tardy employees. Letting employees get away tardiness canresult in chronic lateness and encourage other employees to be late. However, a company

with a punctual culture discourages employee tardiness: Employees come to work on timeto avoid being labeled as unreliable or lazy. Rewards for promptness create incentives foremployees to arrive on time. However, if bosses offer no rewards, employees may believepunctuality is not important or acknowledged.

Dissatisfaction with the Company

Stress from heavy workloads, low pay, tough demands and poor treatment can lowermorale. Employees with low morale are more likely to subconsciously delay coming to work,and adverse conditions at work can push employees away from work. Employees who feelhelpless and angry may use tardiness to show their discontent or passively punish theircompany. If employees do not like their job or company, they are less likely to put in theeffort to be on time or to care about how their actions affect the company.

Read more:What Are the Causes of Tardiness Among Employees? |

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Busyness

It's difficult for some employees to juggle work duties and life demands. James J. Bardsleyand Susan R. Rhodes, authors of "Framework to Identify Correlates of Employee Lateness,"

reveal that employees with young children are more prone to lateness. Dealing with theirchildren's sickness, preparing their children for day care or school in the mornings andtrying to secure child care create barriers to punctuality. In other instances, long work hoursleave little time for workers to handle responsibilities outside of work or rest. Employeesmay begin oversleeping after a series of long and strenuous work days. In addition to the

busyness, many employees underestimate the time needed to prepare for work. Thesefactors can lead to tardiness.

Confidence in Job Security

Upper-level management and highly skilled employees may feel less pressure to avoidtardiness. High-level managers are usually less accountable to other employees and arepowerful enough to avoid punishment for tardiness. In her book "Never Be Late Again: 7Cures for the Punctually Challenged," Diana DeLonzor writes that most employees are toohesitant to approach their boss about being late; therefore, bosses may continue their

behavior without any threat to their job security or challenge from others. Employees withnotable skills, rare talents or social influence may develop a mindset that encourageslateness, especially if the employee has job offers from other companies and his currentemployer is reluctant to fire to him.
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Read more:What Are the Causes of Tardiness Among Employees? |

eHow.comhttp://www.ehow.com/info_8443551_causes-tardiness-among-employees.html#ixzz254dshOk6

What Are the Causes of Tardiness Among

Employees?By Dianne Heath, eHow Contributor

Diane Heath e-how contributor

Lateness is a habit that seems trivial; however, its effects on a company can be costly.

Gini Graham Scott, author of "A Survival Guide to Managing Employees from Hell," notesthat employee tardiness can "delay production if you're a manufacturing company, createcustomer problems if you're in retail, and trigger morale problems for the staff who comein on time." Lateness reduces employee productivity, which decreases profit for yourbusiness. CNET reports that this behavior costs an estimated $3 billion annually in lost

productivity for U.S. businesses.
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PRIOR RESEARCH

Much of the research on employees and their family responsibilities has roots in role theory and

the associated concept of role strain. Pearlin points out that "it is around daily and enduring

roles such as breadwinning and work or marriage and parenthood that much of our lives are

structured through time" (1983: 4). According to role theory, the various roles held by an

individual may compete and potentially conflict with each other. Voydanoff and Kelly (1984)

investigated two potential forms of role strain for employees with children: "overload," which is

used to refer to an excess of overall responsibilities, and "interference," which occurs when

multiple roles require one to be in more than one place at a time. While these researchers did

not measure absenteeism, they did investigate time conflicts resulting from these forms of role

strain. Conceptually, we believe there is a close link between role strain and absenteeism

through the concept of time conflict.

In the conceptual framework utilized in this study, therefore, absenteeism is viewed as a

potential behavioral outcome of conflict between the competing time demands of one's job and

one's family responsibilities. Absenteeism may occur when (a) there is role interference, that is,

where the obligations to one's family interfere with one's job schedule, or (b) there is role

overload, as when the amount of responsibility for both job and family exceeds available hours.

Prior research has revealed a number of factors that may affect absenteeism among employees

who are caregivers, including employees' personal characteristics, caregiving demand variables,

and resources. Personal characteristics which may affect work attendance include gender

(Emlen and Koren, 1984; Klein, 1986; Stoller, 1983; Stone et al., 1987; VandenHeuvel and

Wooden, 1995), age (Gellatly, 1995; Nicholson et al., 1977; Stone et al., 1987), ethnic status

(Dilts et al., 1985), occupation (Klein, 1986; Porter and Steers, 1973), and number of years on

the job (Gellatly, 1995; Nicholson and Goodge, 1976).

Caregiving demands, or the characteristics of the person(s) being cared for and of the

caregiving situation, are also important. Previous studies have found that employees with young

children (Crouter, 1984; Emlen and Koren, 1984; Klein, 1986) or with a large number of

children (Allen, 1980) tend to have increased absenteeism. As children with disabilities have

higher than average rates of physician visits, hospitalizations, and absences from school

(Salkever, 1985), employees with a disabled child may also experience increased absenteeism.

Research on employees with informal elder care responsibilities has focused on stress as well aswork interference and absenteeism. Predictor variables include coresidence with the elder

(Enright and Friss, 1987), residence in a nursing home (negatively related to stress) (Enright and

Friss, 1987), type of impairment (Scharlach and Fredriksen, 1994), number of caregiving tasks

performed (Gibeau and Anastas, 1989), and hours of assistance given (Scharlach and

Fredriksen, 1994).


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Resources available to employees may be conceptualized as factors either within or outside of

the workplace which may reduce role conflict between job and family responsibilities. As such,

they can be expected to reduce absenteeism. Resources outside the workplace include

adequate income (Belle, 1982; Horowitz, 1985), adequate care arrangements (Emlen and Koren,

1984; Louv, 1992) and the availability of others to help with caregiving responsibilities (Angel

and Tienda, 1982; Brody et al., 1994; Emlen, 1987).

Factors within the workplace may also reduce the interference between job and family

commitments, thereby reducing absenteeism. These include flexible work hours (Friedman,

1987; Gibeau et al., 1986; Hewlett et al., 1986), supportive personnel policies (Gibeau et al.,

1986; Wagner and Hunt, 1994), and working part-time (Jackofsky and Peters, 1987).

CURRENT STUDY

Factors Affecting Absenteeism

This study explores the impact on employees' absenteeism of family responsibilities for care of

children and for care of parents. Four kinds of absenteeism, or time lost from work, are

considered as outcomes in this study: days missed, tardiness, times left early or during the day,

and interruptions at work. Most studies of absenteeism are limited to measures of the number

of days missed and/or the incidence of tardiness. However, studies of employees with children

(e.g., Emlen and Koren, 1984) suggest that other forms of time lost from work, such as leaving

work early or being interrupted during the work day to deal with family-related matters, may

occur as frequently or more often, making them at least as important a form of absence to

measure as missing an entire day.

Furthermore, most previous studies of absenteeism have utilized data in company attendance

records, which do not include all incidents of absence, particularly for employees in

professional or management positions, who have more flexibility in their work schedule, or for

employees who arrange time off informally with their supervisor. In relying on employees' self-

reports of four kinds of absenteeism, the study reported on here has the advantage of tapping

forms of absenteeism, including interruptions at work, which may be particularly affected by

caregiving responsibilities and which are not reported in most absenteeism studies.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND HYPOTHESES

Two research questions are addressed in this study. The first is: "How do caregivers of parents

and caregivers of children compare with respect to the kinds and degrees of absenteeism. they

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Lack of Consequences or Rewards-Affecting