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The 2006 CCH Unscheduled Absence Survey again reflected the significant impact that morale has on employee absences. Fifty-five percent of survey respondents rate morale at their organizations to be good/very good while 45 percent report poor/fair morale. It is the organizations that struggle with morale that will suffer more from last minute no-shows.
The survey found that organizations with good/very good morale experience a 2.2 percent rate of unscheduled absences (up from 1.5 percent in 2005) while those reporting poor/fair morale had a rate of 2.9 percent (interestingly, this number is down slightly from the 3.2 percent reported in 2005).
Survey respondents who do not consider unscheduled absences to be a "serious" problem are more likely to rate morale as very good or good than those who do consider it to be a serious problem. However, regardless of what level of morale exists at an organization, employee morale does influence the reasons people call in sick at the last minute:
Seventy percent of unscheduled absences can be attributed to reasons other than personal illness in organizations with poor/fair morale, compared to 60 percent for those with good/very good morale.
Organizations reporting poor/fair morale were more likely to experience unscheduled absenteeism due to stress (15 percent) than organizations reporting morale as good/very good (10 percent).
"The 2006 survey confirms that low employee morale carries a very high price tag," said CCH workplace analyst Pam Wolf, J.D. "Employee morale affects productivity, stress and, as the survey results show us, an employee's willingness just to show up. Organizations are wise to never stop striving to improve employee morale."
Programs more effective in high-morale organizations. The 2006 survey showed that those organizations with good/very good morale rate the overall effectiveness of their policies and programs in controlling unscheduled absences significantly higher than those with poor/fair morale. The overall effectiveness of all policies and programs in organizations with good/very good morale is 3.6 (on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being the most effective), slightly down from 3.7 in 2005. In organizations with poor/fair morale, the overall effectiveness of such programs is only 2.6, up from 2.4 percent in 2005, but still a full point lower than in organizations with good/very good morale.
Low morale makes outlook bleak. Nearly twice as many companies with poor/fair morale (33 percent) reported an increase in unscheduled absences over the past two years; only 17 percent of those with good/very good morale reported an increase. The outlook for the future by organizations with low morale is equally bleak. Thirty-eight percent of employers in organizations with poor/fair morale believe unscheduled absences will increase in the next two years while only 14 percent of employers in companies with good/very good morale share a similar concern.
For additional information on this and other HR topics, consult CCH Human Resources Management or Personnel Practices/Communications.
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