Human Resources: HR.com's Thought Leaders for February 29, 2007

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Thought Leader Interview with David Grote: Absenteeism and Bad Attitude

Dick Grote has become an internationally recognized authority on performance management. He has published many books, one of which even caught the eye of Hollywood. David Creelman sat down with Dick.

Dick Grote has written many books, his most famous being "Discipline Without Punishment." He has also written "The Complete Guide To Performance Appraisal." Both of those were major Book Club selections and they have been translated into various languages including Chinese and Arabic. "Discipline Without Punishment" is something of a management classic now, and has recently been re-issued as a second edition. Strangely enough, Paramount Pictures bought the movie rights to it; I say 'strangely' because it is rare for management books to
become a film.

DC: Dick, can you tell me a little bit about how the film industry took an interest in your work?

DG: Yes, it is every author's dream to sell the movie rights to a book, and as you observed, it is very rare for a business or management book to have that happen. But Paramount Pictures has a business division. They bought the movie rights, and in fact, actually went about producing
the film. So, there is a two-video series called "Respect and Responsibility" that we filmed in a darkened Broadway Theater with screen actors' guild actors. It is a very effective way to give supervisors training in how to deal with the issues that we are talking about today. The easiest way to access it is to go to my website, www.groteconsulting.com.

DC: Why don't I just turn to the topic at hand, which is "absenteeism and bad attitude." With 'sophisticated' issues like engagement or productivity being popular these days why are you focusing on absenteeism and bad attitude?

DG: Every time I am conducting a training program on dealing with people issues in the workplace, and I ask a group of supervisors, give me a list of the most common, most difficult, most vexatious people problems that you encounter, invariably, the two that come up on the top of the list are absenteeism and bad attitude. My empirical data says that these are real, and there is good solid data. Just last month, the magazine, Human Resources Executive, reported on a survey saying only 35% of
unscheduled absences come as a result of personal illness.

Where do all the other unscheduled absences come from? It turns out, 24% of unscheduled absences are a result of family issues, 18% of them are from some personal need, 12% are reported to be caused by stress, and 11% from an entitlement mentality. Now, this is serious, and the fact is that unscheduled absences right now are at the highest level that they have been since 1999. I saw one estimate that says for a large company, unscheduled absences cost $850,000 per year. This is serious business.

DC: HR is a highly regulated area. There are lots of laws like FMLA and ADA that constrain us. To what extent do we have freedom of action in this area?

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David Creelman is CEO of Creelman Research and a well-known writer, research and speaker on critical issues in human capital management. David’s previous work includes Chief of Content and Research for HR.com, in addition to working as a management consultant in Canada and Malaysia, most notably with the Hay Group.

David holds an MBA from the University of Western Ontario and has also taught Rewards and Performance Measures at the University of Malaya executive MBA program. David’s clients include think tanks, consultants, academics and organizations from around the globe. His current focus, in collaboration with Dave Ulrich, is on what organizations should report about human capital intangibles to the financial markets (see www.rbl.net "What the Fortune 50 Tells Wall Street").

David Creelman can be reached by email at creelmanresearch[at]gmail.com

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