Organizational Culture and Sick Leave

Throughout this essay organisational culture will be examined, including the two approaches mainstream and critical. What managers can do to shape culture and also an example of when culture has in fact been changed.

For example, legislating paid sick days opens the door to abuse by employees. Some employees may use these days as vacation without notifying their employer or a specific reason for their absence. This will often leave employers scrambling to find replacements for absent workers, which can put some small businesses in trouble. Abuse of these paid sick days translates into loss of money for businesses and higher costs for consumers.

Organisation culture – The behaviour and morals of the employees within the company have a big impact on the employment relationship e.g if

President Obama on September 7, 2015 executive order was to established paid sick leave and that federal contractors are required to provided up to fifty six hours and seven days of paid sick leave to their employees per year and with this new contract after January 1, 2017. The anticipation made by the white house is that this order of paid sick leave will provide approximation of 300,000 people currently working on federal contracts who do not received this benefits. For employee that are under this order working on the following type of contracts which begins in 2017 some requirement that need to be fulfill is to obtain contract for service of construction, the contracts- like instruments for services must be covered by the Service Contract Act, contract has to allow certain privilege, and last of all the contract has to be in connection with federal property or lands.

Workplace culture is often hard to describe, because it means something different in every organisation and many times employees feel it’s ‘just the way things are’. But so often it can define a company and when it’s not working well, everyone knows about it.

An employee’s health should be the most important factor for an employer. When an employee calls out sick it directly affects the operation and growth of the company.

Sick leave whether it is paid or unpaid is time off from work that employees can use to stay home to attend to their health needs or the health needs of immediate family members. Labor law in the United States currently doesn’t require employers to provide paid sick days in the short term nor does it require employers to offer longer term paid sick leave for more serious illnesses. Furthermore, the current law doesn’t protect workers from termination should they miss work due to sickness (Heymann, J., Rho, H., Schmitt, J., & Earl, A, 2009). In collective bargaining, however, unions can negotiate additional protections regarding sick leave, which may include short and long term disability coverage as well as generous attendance

Companies can also do their part in closing the wage gap by improving their paid sick days policies. Nearly 40 million workers in the United States do not have access to paid sick days. The amount of part time workers who do not have paid sick days is even higher at 73 percent. Because of the lack of paid sick leave, many workers in the United States must go to work sick and if their children are sick they must either send them to school sick or leave them at home alone because they fear that by missing work they will be punished or even fired (Glynn, S. J.; Fisher, M.; and Baxter

“Low-wage workers are the least likely to have access to paid time off” (Appelbaum & Milkman, 2009). While there are many benefits to implementing a paid time off system, there are some drawbacks also. First, employees may be reluctant to take paid time off when they are sick so they can save their paid time off for vacation leave. This means that despite having paid time off at their disposal, employees will come to work sick instead of taking a sick day. Then the sick employee spread their germs to co-workers and now two or three people are at risk of missing work. Some employees believe that in order to be a hard worker, you have to come to work. The workplace is a direct route of disease transmission. If one employee comes to work sick

Working environments mostly operate from within the specific cultural parameters of the dominant cultural group. This can be confounding, conflicting and result in ineffective service provision. There are examples where employees working from within their own cultural practices could provide a better level of professional care but are denied the chance to do so because they have to operate in alignment with the cultural practices of the dominant culture.

A drawback to an integrated PTO plan is combining sick and vacation leave can lead to employees coming to work sick "presenteeism". Presenteeism, according to Korotin, is when sick employees go to work and save their PTO days (2011). Employees are hesitant to use PTO when they are sick when they view PTO as vacation days. This is due to the employee’s perception that he or she is losing vacation time when they take a day off for an illness; despite the fact, PTO is designed to cover both sick and vacation leave. This disadvantage can be managed by establishing an organizational culture that encourages sick employees to stay home. Thus, if an employee comes to work sick, send him or her home, as the employer must protect the rest of its employees

This was the first time HR Department was investigating deeply those data. Therefore I am aware the analysis is not complete and the numbers taken from the system needs more depth statistical analysis. In the organisation there is an absence policy that triggers informal and formal action after 8 days of absence and organisational sick pay is being paid to employees after completing probation period.

There are many definitions of organisational culture available in the literature, many of which are based on the fact that culture consists of values, beliefs, and assumptions shared by the majority of members of an organisation. These characteristics and shared views are then translated into common and repeated patterns of behaviour. Although it is difficult to come up with a single definition that would cover

Culture, as defined by Florea, Goldbach, & Goldbach (2011), is essential, as it affects service quality, organizational productivity, and financial results. This occurs even more so in a hospital setting, an area in which cultures vary within the healthcare providers and their patients. The literature on organizational culture and its impact on nurses and the healthcare system are increasing in frequency due to the increase in cultural variety noted in healthcare organizations. According to the article, Improving Hospital Performance through Organizational Culture (2011), many prior researchers believed that organizational culture had potential effects on employee motivation and behavior. They believed that it affected employees’ productivity, performance, commitment, self-confidence and ethical behavior and many have tested the validity of this theory by researching and studying the organizational cultures within several industries. Prior research has showed that there is a link between excellent cultural organization and overall employee performance. Chee, Kamal, & Wingender (2011) decided to conduct a study of their own to determine how organizational culture

An organization’s culture governs day to day behavior. This type of power may be seen as a control mechanism, which businesses use to manipulate internal and external perception. Every organization has a set of assumed understandings that must be adopted and implemented by new employees in order for them to be accepted. Conformity to the culture becomes the primary basis for reward by the organization. “The role of culture in influencing employee behavior appears to be increasingly important in today’s workplace, as organizations have widened spans of control, flattened structures, introduced teams, reduced