Posted: Perform a Literature Search a Human

¶ … posted: Perform a literature search a human resource law policy. Some topics absenteeism, work place injury, Americans Disabilities Act 1990. Describe law policy a workplace choosing demonstrate compliance .

Human Resource Law Policy -- Absenteeism

The role of the human resource has been gradually increasing throughout the past recent years and this is due to a wide array of changes which impact the business community. One of the most relevant examples in this sense is represented by the shift in global operations in that more and more companies and countries come to generate large GDP proportions from services, rather than industry or agriculture. In such a setting then, the employees represent the intellectual capital of the firm, the creators of value and as such the most important organizational asset (Beckford, 2007).

In order to best deal with the employees, business agents across the world develop and implement several policies aimed at improving the employee-employer relationship. Some of these policies are strictly internal, whereas others rely on laws. Such is the case of the absenteeism policy, which differs from one organization to the other, but is rooted in the legal field as well. The current project then sets out to present the law and reveal its application at BI Advertising, a small size company.

2. Absenteeism law

From the legal standpoint, absenteeism within the workplace is understood as the situation in which an employee is not present at work to perform their regular duties, during a period when this would normally be expected of them (U.S. Legal). Today, workplace absenteeism is still one of the most important and recurrent problems for employers, and the main cause for absenteeism is represented by medical leave.

From a strictly legal standpoint, an absenteeism legislation does not exist per se, meaning as such that the economic agents are allowed to develop and implement their own policies regarding the absenteeism of their staff members. Still, references are made to absenteeism in the United States legislations and a framework for dealing with absenteeism is presented in four specific federal laws, as follows:

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA)

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA), and last

The Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (HR Hero, 2012).

The absence of the employee from the place of employment can be either scheduled or unscheduled. The scheduled absences occur for various events, such as vacations, medical appointments, family activities and other activities which are known ahead of time and planned for. The unscheduled absences also occur for various reasons, such as family emergencies, the illness or even death of a family member, household emergencies (such as floods) and so on.

Aside from being scheduled or unscheduled, the absenteeism from work can also be classified as excused, unexcused or no-fault. Each of these categories is briefly described below:

The excused absences are discussed and approved by the supervisor before they occur and they are normally granted for events such as vacation, medical appointments, jury duty or other activities which cannot be completed outside office hours

The unexcused absences are those which are not discussed with the supervision nor are they approved before the occurrence of the actual event causing the absence, such as the illness of the family member or the household emergency.

Last, the no-fault absences are characterized by the fact that they are neither excused nor unexcused; they are part of the personal days granted to an employee and which can be used discretionary; issues with the no-fault absences are raised when these exceed the number of days allocated (U.S. Legal).

3. The absenteeism policy at BI Advertising

BI Advertising, with the BI acronym standing for business intelligence, is a small size company in the local community, focused on the provision of marketing services to other small size companies, which do not have the resources to continually maintain a full time in-house marketing department. The organization employs 15 staff members, out of which 7 are marketing specialists and the rest are management, administrative, sales staff, IT and design.

Given that the company is reduced in size and still in its incipient stages, each employee is essential to the overall success of the firm. The employees all play clearly established roles and they are all pivotal to completing their tasks and ensuring organizational successes. In such a setting then, several HRM policies are developed and implemented at BI Advertising. Some of them refer to job analysis, staffing mix or performance appraisals; these policies are described below.

Job analysis is traditionally understood as a process by which the economic agent assesses the job at hand and identifies the tasks which need to be completed by the occupant of the position, the responsibilities of the position or the skills and capabilities which need to be possessed by the occupant of the position. In such a setting, the managers at BI Advertising continually review the jobs in the company and strive to align the skills and abilities of their staff members with those required by the job. This objective is attained through training programs or the offering of various financial and non-financial incentives which increase the motivation, commitment and performance of the staff members.

The job analysis process is necessary as it helps the management identify any skill shortages, as well as any outstanding skills of the staff members. Job analysis as such has the effect of ensuring a superior distribution of positions across the firm, supporting as such the overall decision making process. A major application of job analysis is that of supporting the staffing mix and levels, which ensure that the employees at BI Advertising are all able to perform their jobs, and also that they complete each other in a means in which the organizational objectives are best attained. The complementarity of the employees in the mix is also supported at the level of personality compatibility, in the meaning that the managers at BI Advertising look for candidates which could easily be integrated in the culture of the firm, but also those which are reliable at the level of work attendance.

An important aspect of human resource management at BI Advertising is represented by the performance appraisals of the staff members. In this order of ideas, the organization evaluates the performances of the staff members twice a year for the new employees, and once per annum for the employees which have been with the firm for over two years. The scope of these reviews is that of assessing the ability of the employees to perform the tasks assigned to them, the means in which they attain their objectives, as well as the skills which need to be developed by the respective employees in order to better attain their individual professional and the overall organizational goals. The results of the performance appraisals are integrated by the management in the personnel salary decisions in the meaning that extraordinary results are often followed by a raise or a premium.