Find misuses´s or improve working conditions Reasons behind high and low short-term sick leave rates, from a company perspective

Abstract

Short-term sick leave can become costly for companies in Sweden and is a high debated HR problem. Since 1992 the companies in Sweden are responsible for the sick pay of the short-term sick leave, referring to the first 14 days of sickness, with day one as waiting day. Many companies have increased their interest and awareness of short-term sick leave with purpose to reduce their related costs. This thesis contains a cross sectional research with a quantitative and qualitative study of elected warehouses where permanent employed blue collar workers with logistic and sometimes heavy physical work and often shift work works. The purpose with the research is to analyze how the short-term sick leave rates differ in comparable warehouses to company A unit A2 at the rural area and unit A1 located at a small city within logistic area. To find out which the strategies are used to minimize short-term sick leave rate in warehouses with already low or high rate of leave? The study is from a company perspective and predominantly focuses on how the HR management and how the management handles the short-term sick leave among the elected companies. Interviews are done with HR representatives and hence all information is coming from those representatives. Therefore it is an appreciation from the HR department how they found working situation for their co-workers. Individual differences, leadership and organizational changes, creates differences and tend to influence the individual co-worker very much according to the HR representatives, hence educations and strategic procedures that increase relations between co-worker and management are encouraged. Reasonable working groups are recommended, since one manager just has the capacity to take care of a certain amount of co-workers.