A federal government department has high levels of absenteeism among the office staff. The head of office administration argues that employees are misusing the company’s sick leave benefits. However, some of the mostly female staff members have explained that family responsibilities interfere with work. Using the MARS model, as well as your knowledge of absenteeism behavior, discuss some of the possible reasons for absenteeism here and how it might be reduced.

The MARS model of individual behavior states that behavior is a function of motivation, ability, role perceptions, and situational factors. With respect to absenteeism, employees may be away from assigned work because they don’t want to attend work due to lacking a meaningful work life or being pushed away by workplace conditions (motivation), they are not clear about their expected duties and responsibilities (role perceptions), lacking the necessary abilities to cope with work (ability), and/or environmental conditions that prevent them from attending work (situational factors).

In this incident, situational factors may explain mostly why female employees are absent. Specifically, family responsibilities interfere with their work attendance. However, some absenteeism among men and women may be due to sick leave policies. It is known that generous sick leave benefits reduce attendance motivation. Whatever the reasons given, the way to reduce the unwanted conditions can be traced back to the 4 components in the MARS model for any kind of behavioral modification. Specifically, giving the employees the “want” to do, providing support in the “how” to do, clarifying the “what” to do and helping in eliminating any situational obstacles increase the likelihood of favorable work performances.

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