Nordstrom Financial Statement Analysis

NORDSTROM (JWN) I. Nordstrom’s overview Nordstrom is classified as an Upscale Independent Department Store Chain and is noted as one of the largest department stores of its type. Nordstrom is founded in 1901 by two partners, John W. Nordstrom and Carl F. Wallin. It’s headquarter is in Seattle, Washington area. Nordstrom carries a wide variety of merchandise and specialty goods, which includes apparel, shoes, jewelry, cosmetics, fragrances, handbags, accessories, and in some locations, home furnishings. Nordstrom is dealing with competition on many different levels.It is competing with higher end stores such as Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue. In addition, it is also competing with second tier stores such as Macy’s, Dillard’s, and Bloomingdale’s. Dealing with diverse competition, upscale retailer Nordstrom has been famous for superior customer service for over 100 years and has been recognized on every 100 Best Companies To Work For list publishe d in Fortune magazine since 1998. Nordstrom operates over 200 retail locations across the country with worldwide revenue $10. 9 billion in 2011.It has two reportable segments: Retail and Credit. The Retail segment includes 115 ‘Nordstrom’ full-line stores, 89 off-price ‘Nordstrom Rack’ stores, two ‘Jeffrey’ boutiques, and one clearance store that operate under the name ‘Last Chance. ’ Nordstrom full-line stores and online store are substantially integrated to provide customers with a seamless shopping experience across channels. The Nordstrom Rack stores purchase high-quality name brand merchandise directly from vendors and also serve as outlets for clearance merchandise from Nordstrom stores.The Credit segment includes wholly owned federal savings bank, Nordstrom FSB, through which Nordstrom provides a private label credit card, two Nordstrom VISA credit cards and a debit card for Nordstrom purchases. The credit and debit cards fe ature a shopping-based loyalty program designed to increase customer visits and spending. Although the primary purpose of our Credit business is to foster greater customer loyalty and drive more sales, Nordstrom also generate revenues through finance charges and other fees on these cards.In retail department stores, consumer’s purchases are made within each department because each department is treated separately to achieve economies in promotion, buying, service, and control. Instead of categorizing departments by merchandise, Nordstrom created fashion departments that fit individual lifestyles. The retailer's best customers benefit from Nordstrom's â€Å"Perpetual Inventory† initiative, which provides the â€Å"right product, at the right place, at the right time. Nordstrom’s customer service is superior in that they put maintaining a customer relationship their top priority. It‘s main goal is to provide outstanding service every day, one customer at a time, and support the employees who deliver service to those customers. Each Nordstrom employee has a business card, which he or she gives to customers, to encourage them to reach back directly if they need anything. In addition, Nordstrom spends much less on traditional advertising than its competitors do, and to Nordstrom, â€Å"satisfied customers are much more persuasive than an ad†.Its legendary customer service is a competitive advantage that can't be easily duplicated, and the company spends a lot of time, money, and effort training employees to maintain that distinction. Even in times of economic distress, Nordstrom still maintains an unwavering commitment to making choices that are in the best interest of the customer. Therefore, Nordstrom keeps growing and maintains a great financial result in comparison with other department stores. Nordstrom business strategies are: 1. Maintaining good relationship with vendors and consumers 2.Maintaining good relationship with em ployees and providing effective training to them to develop future leaders 3. Expanding into new markets, technological investments, acquisitions and the timely completion of construction associated with newly planned stores, relocations and remodels. 4. Having effective inventory management; efficient and proper allocation of capital resources; successful execution of information technology strategy; and effective cost control in advertising, marketing, and promotion campaigns. 5.Managing debt levels to maintain an investment grade credit rating as well as operate with an efficient capital structure for its growth plans and industry II. Company financial ratio analysis: 1. Liquidity: Liquidity:| 2011| 2010| 2009| 2008| 2007| Current Ratio| 2. 16| 2. 57| 2. 01| 2. 01| 2. 06| Cash Ratio | 0. 73| 0. 80| 0. 39| 0. 04| 0. 22| Cash Flow from Operations Ratio| 0. 46| 0. 63| 0. 62| 0. 53| 0. 19| Overall regards to liquidity ratios, the higher the number the better; however, a too high also indicates that the firms were not using their resources to their full potential. Current ratio of 1. or greater shows that a company can pay its current liabilities with its current assets. JWN’s ratio increased from 2. 06 in 2007 to 2. 57 in 2010, and slightly decreased to 2. 16 in 2011. JWN’s cash ratio increased significantly from 22% in 2007 to 80% in 2010. JWN has a cash ratio of 73% in 2011, which is useful to creditors when deciding how much debt they would be willing to extend to JWN. In addition, JWN also has moderate CFO ratio of 46%, indicating the companies’ ability to pay off their short term liabilities with their operating cash flow. There was a great improvement in JWN’s liquidity ratios over the past 5 years.In general, JWN has efficient liquidity ratios which allow the company to cover its seasonal cash needs and to maintain appropriate levels of short term borrowings. 2. Activity: Activity| 2011| 2010| 2009| 2008| 2007| Inventory Turno ver| 6. 20| 6. 29| 5. 93| 5. 84| 5. 66| Avg. # of Days Inventory| 58. 83| 58. 03| 61. 59| 62. 53| 64. 50| Receivables Turnover| 5. 06| 4. 51| 4. 16| 4. 60| 7. 35| Working Capital Turnover| 3. 67| 3. 89| 4. 52| 5. 13| 5. 98| Fixed Assets Turnover| 4. 54| 4. 25| 3. 70| 4. 08| 4. 86| Total Assets Turnover | 1. 36| 1. 38| 1. 35| 1. 52| 1. 74| Length of Operating Cycle| 130. 9| 138. 87| 149. 38| 141. 93| 114. 18| I Inventory turnover shows how efficient a firm can keep its inventory turning at a steady flow from the manufacturer to the store and out to the consumer. Therefore, the higher the better because this means the firm is getting its inventory out to consumers at a more efficient pace. JWN’s inventory turnover is approximately the same in 2011 than in 2010, 6. 20 and 6. 29 respectively, which has slightly higher the number of days inventory from 58 days to 59 days. Same as inventory turnover ratio, AR turnover show how efficient a firm is at collecting its receivable.The fa ster a firm can collect its receivables, the better. JWN’s AR turnover has increased from 4. 78 in 2010 to 5. 36 in 2011. An increase in both inventory and AR turnover reduces the Length of Operating Cycle from 139 days to 131 days. In addition, there is also a good sign when JWN’s fixed asset turnover and total asset turnover increase. In general, JWN has ability to predict or respond to changes in fashion trends, consumer preferences and spending patterns, and to match its merchandise levels, mix and shopping experience to sales trends and consumer tastes, significantly impacts its sales and operating results. . Profitability: Profit| 2011| 2010| 2009| 2008| 2007| Gross Margin | 0. 39| 0. 39| 0. 36| 0. 37| 0. 39| Return on Sales| 0. 06| 0. 06| 0. 05| 0. 05| 0. 08| ROA | 0. 09| 0. 09| 0. 07| 0. 07| 0. 14| ROE | 0. 34| 0. 34| 0. 32| 0. 34| 0. 44| Upon evaluation of the operating efficiency, Gross profit margin, Return on sale, ROA, and ROE, JWN did a pretty good job du ring the fiscal year ended Jan 28th 2012. Gross profit margin, the net profit margin, ROA, and ROE have the same rate for 2011 and 2010, which are 39%, 6%, 9%, and 34% respectively. By evaluating JWN’s profitability ratio, JWN once again is upward looking.ROA is a comprehensive measure of profitability, taking into account how a firm’s assets and profits are used to create future profit. ROE is a profitability measure and is influenced by the affiliation between a firm’s debt and its owner’s equity. JWN has done an extraordinary job at maintaining moderate ROA and ROE ratio over 5 years period. Analyzing JWN’s profitability ratio shows that JWN should continue being profitably in the future. 4. Leverage: Leverage| 2011| 2010| 2009| 2008| 2007| Total Liabilities / Total Equity| 3. 34| 2. 69| 3. 19| 3. 68| 4. 02| Total Liabilities (BV) / Equity at Market| 0. 7| 0. 48| 0. 44| 0. 39| 0. 39| Times Interest Earned| 9. 61| 8. 80| 6. 04| 5. 95| 16. 85| As firm’s debt grows larger, debt to equity ratio in turn increases. Debt to equity ratio is an important factor in considering a firm’s credit risk. JWN’s debt to equity ratio increases 25% from 2. 69 in 2010 to 3. 34 in 2011. If this ratio decreases, there is less leverage within the firm. The increase in debt to equity ratio is due to the increase in long term debts and the decrease in total stockholder equity. Times interest earned ratio is a coverage measure; an increase has a positive impact on the firm.There was a significant decrease in Time interest earned ratio from 16. 85 in 2007 to 5. 95 in 2008. However, this ratio increased slightly over years. JWN’s Times interest earned has increased from 8. 80 in 2010 to 9. 61 in 2011. Ultimately, JWN generate more than enough income before interest and tax to cover for its interest expense. 5. Market related statistics: Like many luxury stores, Nordstrom has seen its sales rebound since late 2009 as well-he eled shoppers have become more comfortable with spending, despite volatility in the stock market.Nordstrom also has worked hard to make it easier to shop by adding Wi-Fi access for shoppers at all of its full-line department stores, offering free shipping on most items without any minimum purchase in September 2010, and fusing its online and in-store inventory systems so shoppers can find out online what's in stock at any given store in the chain. Nordstrom said it expects revenue at its stores open at least a year to rise 4 percent to 6 percent in the current full fiscal year, and it expects to earn $3. 30 to $3. 45 per share.JWN analyzes its dividend payout ratio and dividend yield, while taking into consideration its operating performance and capital resources, and plans to target a 25% to 30% dividend payout ratio in 2011. JWN has increased its dividend payout ratio and its dividend yield in 2011, 29% and 1. 9 % respectively. JWN paid dividends of $0. 92 per share in 2011, $0. 7 6 per share in 2010, and $. 64 per share in each of 2009 and 2008. 6. Quality of financial information Nordstrom uses a more moderate strategy when it comes to its accounting policies.It basically uses similar basic standards as other firms in the industry. Management and select employees of Nordstrom receive stock options and bonuses based on how profitable and how much growth the company is, which may lead to intentional accounting distortion to increase these benefits. Although distortion would be beneficial to management, the standards used by Nordstrom to account for stock issued to employees seem well disclosed and straight forward. Compared to the accounting policies and estimates used in the past five years, Nordstrom has not significantly changed any of its accounting standards.Estimates such as returns are based on past returns and performance and have not altered much in recent years. Nordstrom’s uses its historical data to estimate future performance for the use o f the inventory account. Nordstrom’s accounting policies and estimates seem to have no significant distortions. The changes in policies are well recorded and explained in the footnotes, leaving no concern about their accounting policies. The changes in policies accounting standards and estimates all seem to be legitimate. The manner in which Nordstrom discloses their financial information to the public is of extremely high quality.Nordstrom exceeds their expectation of providing customers and shareholders with an adequate explanation for nearly every element of their finances. After the presentation of each financial statement, Nordstrom provides a detailed clarification concerning each component listed in a manner that could be easily interpreted by the common inquirer. In general, Nordstrom effectively communicates their activities with their investors and are relatively free of unpredictable or unexplainable transactions. III. Comparison to the industry average and another store (Dillards)Liquidity:| JWN| DDS| Industry| Rating-JWN| Current Ratio | 2. 16| 1. 83| 1. 15| 8| Cash Ratio | 0. 73| 0. 26| 0. 12| 8| Cash Flow from Operations Ratio | 0. 46| 0. 58| -| -| Leverage|   | Total Liabilities / Total Equity| 3. 34| 1. 10| 1. 33| 4| Total Liabilities (BV) / Equity at Market| 0. 57| 0. 72| 0. 17| 4| Times Interest Earned| 9. 61| 5. 83| 7. 41| 7| Activity|   | Inventory Turnover | 6. 20| 3. 12| 6. 14| 6| Avg. # of Days Inventory | 58. 83| 117. 12| 59. 45| 6| Receivables Turnover | 5. 06| 232. 73| 22. 91| 3| Working Capital Turnover| 3. 67| 8. 88| 40. 9| 3| Fixed Assets Turnover| 4. 54| 2. 54| 6. 06| 4| Total Assets Turnover | 1. 36| 1. 47| 1. 91| 4| Length of Operating Cycle | 130. 98| 118. 69| 75. 38| 3| Profit|   | Gross Margin| 0. 39| 0. 37| 0. 29| 6| Return on Sales| 0. 06| 0. 07| 0. 06| 5| ROA| 0. 09| 0. 11| 0. 11| 5| ROE | 0. 34| 0. 22| 0. 25| 6| Both JWN and DDS maintained an efficient liquidity ratio which allowed them to cover their season al cash needs and to maintain appropriate levels of short term borrowings. DDS do not generate as much profit as JWN but it also has much lower leverage ratio than JWN.JWN has much higher debt to equity ratio than the industry average. However, its Time Interest Earned ratio is better than the industry. JWN’s activity ratio seems to be better than DDS, but below the industry average. JWN’s Beta is 1. 57 which theoretically indicates 57% more volatile than the market. DDS’s Beta is 2. 53 which is . 96 higher than JWN’s Beta and also means more volatile than the market. A beta of greater than  1 offers the possibility of a higher rate of return, but  also poses  more risk. In addition, JWN also has much higher dividend payout ratio and dividend yield than DDS.In general, JWN has higher rate of return and less volatile than DDS. JWN has higher dividend yield and lower dividend payout ratio than industry average. The growth and income pick pays an indus try-leading dividend yield of 1. 90%. Its ROE and Net profit margin are also higher than the industry average. Nordstrom clearly has a higher return than its competitor and is likely to be more profitable than its competitor and industry. In comparison with DDS and the industry average, it is apparent that there are no concerns with the accounting for the components of JWN ratios.JWN was consistently somewhat outperformed its competitor and the industry average. In its industry, JWN is apparently a leader in utilizing its capital to create value for the firm, creating profits, and increasing shareholder value IV. Growth in revenue and income Year| Revenue| Net income| 2011| $10,877| $683| 2010| $9,700| $613| 2009| $8,267| $441| 2008| $8,573| $401| 2007| $9,080| $715| 2006| $8,666| $678| Statistics|   | JWN| YoY growth in revenues | 2011| 12. 13%| YoY growth in net income| 2011| 11. 42%| YoY growth in revenues| 2010| 17. 33%| YoY growth in net income| 2010| 39. 00%|YoY growth in re venues| 2009| -3. 57%| YoY growth in net income| 2009| 9. 98%| YoY growth in revenues| 2008| -5. 58%| YoY growth in net income| 2008| -43. 92%| YoY growth in revenues| 2007| 4. 78%| YoY growth in net income| 2007| 5. 46%| YoY growth in revenues| (Average)| 12. 13%| YoY growth in net income| (Average)| 11. 42%| Nordstrom generates revenues from its credit segment, which consists of a wholly-owned federal savings bank that offers Nordstrom VISA credit and debit cards, and a private label card. Nordstrom also profits from its Faconnable boutiques located in France, Portugal, Belgium and the U.S. The remaining revenues are brought in by the retail store segment; the stores specialize in high quality apparel, shoes, cosmetics, and accessories. Nordstrom also sells direct via the internet at www. nordstrom. com. JWN’s revenue for 2011 increased 12. 7% compared with 2010 driven by the strength of Nordstrom full-line stores, rapid growth in its online business and improving results a t Nordstrom Rack. JWN opened three Nordstrom full-line stores, eighteen Nordstrom Rack stores and one Treasure & bond store, relocated two Nordstrom Rack stores, and acquired HauteLook during the year 2011.These additions represented 4. 0% of its total revenue for 2011. Same-store sales increased 7. 2%, with increases of 8. 2% at Nordstrom and 3. 7% at Nordstrom Rack. Nordstrom’s revenue was in a range of $8 billion to 11 billion from 2007 to 2011. There was a slightly decrease or increase in revenue over 5 years period. Nordstrom’s net income was in a range of $401 mil to $715 mil. There is a significant decrease in 2007 net income. It went from $715 mil to $401 mil, which is approximately 44% decrease in net income.However, its net income increased dramatically in 2010, from $441 mil in 2009 to $613 mil in 2010, which is nearly 40% increase in net income. In order to predict an accurate forecast for Nordstrom’s Income Statement, Statement of Cash Flows, and Ba lance sheet, a sustainable growth rate is needed. After examining Nordstrom’s past performance and computing past growth rates on Nordstrom’s financial, Nordstrom has an average growth in revenue and net income 12. 13% and 11. 42% respectively. V. â€Å"G† Growth rate Risk free rate |   | 3. 10%| Market rate|   | 10. 00%| Beta|   | 1. 58|Rate of return| Rf + B(Rm-Rf)| 14. 00%| # of share outstanding|   | 208| EPS|   | 3. 15| P/E ratio|   | 17. 48| Book value per share|   | 9. 42| Equity| Book value/share x # of share| 1959| Forecasted Net Income| EPS x # of share | 655. 2| Required Income| Equity x rate of return| 274| Residual Income| Forecasted NI – Required income| 381| Market price per share| P/E ratio x EPS| 55| Market capital| market price x # of share| 11453| Unrecognized intangible value (UIV)| market capital – equity| 9494| Growth rate| [(UIV *rate of return)-residual income]/UIV| 10%| With a risk free rate of 3. 0%, market r ate of 10%, and JWN’s Beta 1. 58, Nordstrom has a rate of return of 14% and growth rate of 10%. The growth rate 10% is slightly lower than the forecasted growth rate 11. 42% in net income and 12. 13% in revenue, based on the its past 5 years financial information. With the growth rate of 10%, the discount rate 14% from CAPM model is high enough for Nordstrom. Without the growth rate, discount rate 14% is too low because the capital market and market price per share will be $4679 million and $22. JWN’s market capital and market price per share are actually $11,453 million and $55/ respectively.With growth rate of 10%, JWN will have 14% in rate of return. VI. Recommendation about stock After evaluating Nordstrom’s past performance and forecasted its future growth, there should be a â€Å"BUY† in Nordstrom stock. Nordstrom has established itself as a high-end apparel retailing company. Nordstrom has founded itself upon excellent customer service and an unmat ched reputation. Its main competitors are Saks, Dillard’s, and Neiman Marcus. Nordstrom’s accounting policies are moderate and very well disclosed; they leave no room for any potential red flags to be raised. Nordstrom’s transparent accounting olicies show that the managers have confidence in the firm and its ability to perform. No distortion is used in their statements proving the firms high integrity standards. Upon completion of Nordstrom’s ratio analysis it is apparent that there should be no concerns as to how Nordstrom compares to its competition. In most cases Nordstrom was either average or stood above the competition. There were very few cases where Nordstrom fell behind in its market. Nordstrom would grow at an average 10% percent per year. This is shown through increasing sales and expansion of new stores.Nordstrom has $10,877 million net revenue, $683 million net income, EPS $3. 15, and dividend $. 90/share in fiscal 2012. Nordstrom is expecte d to have $11,705 Million net revenue, $735 million net income, EPS $3. 48 and dividend $. 90 per share during fiscal year 2013. JWN recently acquired online private sale leader HauteLook Inc, which will help the company in building its multi-channel retail format. The acquisition will facilitate Nordstrom to increase its direct business capabilities, implement an enterprise-wide inventory management system, direct sales to online customers and enhance customer service.JWN’s operations are based on a variable cost business model and about 40% to 45% of selling, general and administrative expenses are variable in nature. This flexible cost structure not only helps the company to mitigate the impact of sluggish sales trends on margins, but also enables it to quickly capitalize on the emerging opportunities when market conditions recover. Consequently, Nordstrom can expect a steady improvement in profitability moving forward. Nordstrom has 8. 6% increase in same-store sales for the five week period ended March 31st 2012 compared with the five week period ended April 2nd 2012.Total retail sales of $1. 03 billion for March 2012 increased 14. 7% compared with total retail sales of $897 million for the same period in fiscal year 2011. In addition, Nordstrom has a 7. 1% increase in same-store sales for the four-week period ended April 28th, 2012 compared with the four-week period ended April 30th, 2011. Preliminary total retail sales of $802 million for April 2012 increased 10. 5% compared with total retail sales of $726 million for the same period in fiscal 2011. First quarter same-store sales increased 8. 5% compared with the same period in fiscal 2011.First quarter total retail sales of $2. 53 billion increased 13. 7% compared with total retail sales of $2. 23 billion for the same period in fiscal 2011. In addition, JWN also invests 16. 4 million USD in Bonobos, an exclusive brand of men? s clothes that sells pants and other clothes online. Nordstrom will al so sell Bonobos products through its online store and through more than 100 brick and mortar stores. This move is one of Nordstrom? s efforts to capitalize on the growth opportunities and innovation potential that the web provides, which reflects a smart decision from a dynamic management team.

Economics Reaction Paper on Sabah Essay

A feud between two Muslim governments, ignited by the sultan of  Sulu when he and his subjects headed to Sabah to reclaim their once territory. Some standoff that went on for over a month now. This standoff that gained nothing but transgressions, especially on the  side of the sultanate of Sulu. Their futile measures to repossess Sabah. Their  defiance against the president’s orders to not proceed. This only resulting to the  massacre of the sultan’s clan members. To this day, the sultan, his family, and  followers were being hunted down by the Malaysian military forces. With this,  they always have to take evasive action for them to survive. Then, there’s the  possible criminal charges which the Kiram family might face once they go back  to the Philippines. Additional problems to be solved by the government. The people fleeing  from Sabah, Malaysia because of the ongoing firefight between the Royal Family  of Sulu and the Malaysian Armed Forces there; Heading to refuge camps in our  country. Also, the decline on the supply of goods in Muslim provinces in the   Philippines. The goods and services, coming from Malaysia, are having increase  in terms of their price. All of these are happening because the Malaysian government is  prohibiting the people in our country to enter their territory without their  permission. Now that the facts about this issue are laid down, we will readily  proceed my personal thoughts regarding this matter. First of all, I find it a very impulsive and reckless move for the Royal  Family of Sulu to start yet another dispute between the Philippines and  Malaysia. To make another historical claim in regards with Sabah is like  starting a never-ending war. It only gets worse by the minute. No fruitful  result reaped. Another, I don’t think that our country could ever obtain again the  rights on Sabah. I said it because we have been making claims on this for  many years. Still, nothing has happened. So what makes the sultan of Sulu think that he could, they could? Economics Reaction Paper Passed by: Shunamite D. Purificacion I-22 Passed to: Mr. Serafin Arviola

Essay on Poverty Essay

â€Å"I often asked what is the most serious form of human rights violation in the world today and my reply is consistent: extreme poverty.† (Mary Robinson, 2002) World Poverty: New policies to defeat old enemies, Bristol: The Policy Press, 2002, p. x1 This essay will account for and assess ways in which contemporary society seeks to end world poverty by doing the following. As poverty mean different things to different societies the essay will give a meaning for poverty that will mirror this; it will refer primarily to theoretical perspectives of, Amartya Sen and will draw on studies of Peter Townsend, then it will examine how malnutrition, lack of education, debt and unequal life chances can cause the cycle of poverty. Finally, it will inform on how world organizations like World Bank, United Nations and Steven Sinnot Foundation are trying to improve living standards of millions. There is over one billion people living in extreme poverty in the world, Poverty shows itself in many different ways; they include not having a job or any means of earning or making a livelihood; hunger and malnutrition; ill health; limited or lack of access to education and other basic necessities; increases the risk of untimely death; homelessness; unsafe environments and social discrimination and exclusion. (Alcock 2006). There are two types of poverty; absolute which is where people do not have the means to obtain the basic necessities to survive, they live on less than $1 (US) per day, on the other hand there is relative this is where people have jobs but the wage is so low that they cannot afford the necessities that others in their societies have, they could be relegated to absolute poverty with change of circumstance example becoming ill and having to give up work. (Gibbons, 2006). In 1995 in Copenhagen, the Millennium Campaign was created and agreed by 117 United Nations States at the World Submit on Social Development. The declaration dedicated the UK to the, goal ending poverty in the world through specific actions and with the cooperation of other international communities. After this task, forces were set up focusing upon different aspects of global poverty. Alcock, 2006), p, 48. Peter Townsend theoretical stance on poverty is poverty equals low income and a disadvantaged lifestyle, people are poor when they cannot afford to buy the normal things like others in the society in which they belong; they are  deprived of the lifestyle they should have. He sees poverty as relative. I believe that he was possibly influenced by the benefit system in the UK in which he was born. Whereas Amartya Sen see poverty as â€Å"unfreedoms†, his theoretical stance is that poverty is deprivation of â€Å"basic capability† not having the ability to work rather than not having any income, some of the reasons suggested are being too young or too old, gender and social roles, pregnancy and child care. He sees poverty as â€Å"absolute†. I believe his theories are influences by the society in which they were born and raised, a third world country with most of the population lacking the basic necessities to survive. (Alcock, 2006). Even in richer countries some groups within the society are very disadvantaged they do not have access to health care, education, jobs or any economic security. America is one of the world’s superpower yet it has the highest poverty rate of any rich nation, According to the census bureau, 15 percent of Americans or more than 46 million people, live below the poverty line, defined as an annual income of $23,000 for a family with two children. Of those, six million live in extreme poverty, with an income of half that or less. (Cornwell, 2012) One of the causes of poverty is malnutrition, the United Nation World Food Program projected that 830 million people go hungry each day, most of them in the developing countries with calorie intake of fewer than 1,800 not enough to keep an adult with the energy needed to lead an active healthy life or to be able provide for themselves and their family, it takes their dignity away. Of that number 200 million are children under the age of 5 years, they are underweight and ill, every year 12 million of them die of starvation, with so many children dying the future of their countries are gloomy. Another cause is lack of education, According to the United Nations International Labour Organization more than 218 million children one in every four are working in developing countries. 126 million are working in hazardous conditions, some work as servants for rich families, others work in agriculture and manufacturing, hotels they work long hours on very low wage, as result they are unable to go to school to learn skills that would offer them hope of ending the cycle that would most likely help out of poverty, so the cycle goes on. (Giddens, 2009) Trade, Africa, though one of the poorest countries is rich in natural resources such as timber and oil but trading with the rest of the world is  made difficult because of poor infrastructure, corruption the impact of AIDs on the population of working age. The rules of trade are very stringent and benefit the developed countries more than the poor ones, the poor countries are under cut by the rich as a result they are at a disadvantage. They end up with debt which they cannot pay back (Gibbons, 2009) Unequal life chances is another cause, there is an enormous difference in standards of living between people in rich and poor countries. 40 percent of the world’s poor live in poor countries, they live in absolute poverty. Almost a third of them are undernourished and almost all are illiterate, lacking access to basic education. Many are from tribes or ethnic groups that differ from the dominant group in the society in which they live as a result they are discriminated against. The high income countries accounts for 15 percent of the world’s population they are responsible for 79 percent of the world’s annual output of wealth. They have decent housing, enough food, they have safe drinking water and so many life comforts that the poor countries could only dream off. There are also large numbers poor people in those rich countries but they live in relative as oppose to absolute poverty. (Giddens, 2006) Education would make such a difference to these children and their families lives; it would provide them with skills needed to do skilled work, which would result in economic growth. Also educated people are less likely to have large families thus reducing toe world population. Education is an investment for the future; it is the quickest way to getting poor people out of poverty as seen in Katine which is an area in north east Uganda, population 25,000. A project called Katine Project is run in partnership with Barclays, The Guardian Newspaper and African Medical Research. It is structured around five key components, health, education, water and sanitation, income generation and empowers communities. It is centered on the schools in the area; its aim is to empower its young students. 4000 text books has been supplied to the schools, there is a 21 percent rise in enrolment with more disabled students, orphans and girls joining. Access to comprehensive education is key to the program. As a result of programs like these children world over will gain the skills needed to be able to compete for jobs, make informed choices, and become productive citizens of  their countries. (Engage, Issue six) World organizations such as World Bank, World Health Organization and The United Nations development program have tirelessly supported the cause of international poverty in different countries across the world. They have put together Millennium goals aimed at helping to get rid of poverty, some of the goals are to reduce by half the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water set in 2000, and they have produced annual report on the different aspects of the international dimensions of poverty. (Alcock, 2006) With so many millions of rich people in our world there should not be poverty on the scale in which we have examined. What is poverty? It is a type of cancer that needs to be cured, malnutrition saps energy away from people and as a result they are too weak to provide for themselves and their families they are left weak and helpless, Lack of education keeps people lacking the skills needed to give them a fighting chance of getting out of the poverty trap. Government s of the world have created Goals in an effort to end this travesty, hopefully these goals will be fulfilled and in the next decade we would have done enough to eliminated poverty. 1,529 words References Books Poverty in the United Kingdom, Peter Townsend, (1979) Sociology, sixth edition, Anthony Giddens, (2009) Understanding Poverty, third edition, Pete Alcock, (2006) Journal Articles World Poverty: New policies to defeat old enemies, Bristol: The Policy Press, 2002, p, xi Engage, issue six (The Steve Sinnott Foundation) Newspaper Article Rupert Cornwell, the Independent on Sunday 21 October 2012.

Evolution of Management Principles Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Evolution of Management Principles - Essay Example At the present, the work is supposed to be carried out by a basis of sharing and caring within the organization’s regimes which was not the case say two decades down the road. With the changing times, the business world has evolved and so have the different methodologies and the ways and means through which it is carried day in day out. One needs to realize the fact that business is a consistently changing world and in this world only the people who are ready to change are successful. Thus to put it in the related context, change is the only constant in the world and in the business scheme of things, changing to suit the will and desire of the customers and/or the stakeholders as well as doing one last bit to bring in more revenues and profits for the company just plays the right trick for the business to succeed both in the short term as well as in the long run. (Cyert & March, 1963) Organizations which stagnate over a period of time and do not change because of one pressure or the other usually die out quickly. The ones that have existed thus far have relied a great deal on the phenomenon attached with change and consistent upgrading of the needs as put forward by the business and its norms. Furthermore, the changing market structure might call for changing strategies and lines of action that would all target the people for whom the product is actually designed as well as the competitors with whom the clutter is being broken in the environs of the marketplace. Thus competition brings in more and more quality at the end of the company with regards to its products as well as more sales in the form of its varied and changed stance on focusing towards the customers rather than the product itself. Every big business or multinational that is existent in present times credits itself on to the vision of an exemplary personality which started it all when the going was tough and when there was a huge competition in the related

Has Wikipedia influenced the way we gather information Research Paper

Has Wikipedia influenced the way we gather information - Research Paper Example These changes have helped us to get better and better. Mobile phone can be claimed to be the icon of Information Technology as today globally there are over 6 billion mobile connections and around 4 billion of these belong to unique consumers, it can be implied that two out of three people on earth have cell phone. The cell phone subscribers are increasing rapidly. SMS is a very popular service that cell phone users avail, in 2012, 2.19 trillion SMS were sent and received by the American population (Wireless Federation, 2013). In the course of communicating through short messages a surprising phenomenon has surfaced. It is that SMS - supposedly the cheapest mode of communication as a result of which this modality of communication is most popular amongst young subscribers, especially students. An extract from a school girl’s SMS is: "My smmr hols wr CWOT. B4, we used 2go2 NY 2C my bro, his GF & thr 3 :- kids FTF. ILNY, it's a gr8 plc." [3] †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.(BBC, 2003) It may be c hallenging for a sexagenarian to comprehend this message, few may take it as an output from a web based transliteration tool. A closer look at the text being exchanged by students comprise of shortcuts, homophones, omissions, emoticons, typos, native language, initials, acronyms, simpler tenses as well as verbs and the punctuation has been used in a different form. In this information age, this new choice of communication has come up and it has many names, like txt talk, txtese, txto, chatspeak, txt lingo, SMSish, txtslang etc. The young children and students use a different type of language while texting, the fact is visible from the above cited text. Accordingly, numerous academicians, experts and others have echoed their concerns about the possibility of language deterioration. Extant peer-reviewed literature published on research carried out by researchers in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Malaysia posits that textese is popular not only in developed countries but it is equally popular i n developing countries (Ahmad, Nurullah & Sarkar, 2010) (Aziz, Shamim , Aziz & Priya , 2013) (Jungesj, 2011). Textese is gradually showing up as a disruptive medium, it has not only entered the social networking domain but is starting to topple email writing. With the kind of acceptance and extent of adoption, linguists are intrigued at the way the communication through texts is impacting the language of the users. As per linguists, textese has a convention but it is not structured and it is less sophisticated. The reason that language in textese has evolved is that because the convention is very user friendly, to the extent that typing a textese appears to be as east as talking. Another good reason for the popularity of textese could be that a user can key in the message at very high speed. In other words, because of the stipulated length of text that is 160 characters – a user can pack lot more information when compared with grammatically correct English. Furthermore, a dee per analysis of textese indicates that it has numerous short-forms like LOL – Laugh Out Loud, ROTFL – Rolling On The Floor Laughing. A specific website lists over 1100 smileys and acronyms those form a part of textese. Expressions like LOL can be seen as a marker of accommodation, some call these as pragmatic particles as they are

Financial Managment Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Financial Managment - Coursework Example igh stock of debentures is usually considered unattractive to invest in for the reason that it has a higher risk especially in the times of financial volatility since only holders of debenture have priority over the company assets in such circumstances. Prudent financial management stipulates that, a business should not depend much on loan capital and debentures compared to equity capital unless it is only being employed for a very short period of time. However, these kinds of ascertaions are highly challenged by Modigliani and Miller (MM). In fact their basic hypotheses states that, in an efficient market, the nonexistence of bankruptcy costs, asymmetric information, taxes and agency costs, the business’s value is not affected by the manner in which that business is financed. According to MM, it doesn’t matter whether the capital of the firm is raised through selling debt or issuing stock. They further state that, the dividend policy of the firm also does not affect it s value. Actually, the argument of MM is straightforward; the cash flows that a corporation can make for all investors are all the same despite the capital gearing. According to them, changing the capital gearing does not in any way alter the firm’s general cash flows (Modigliani & Miller, 1958). b) Factors to consider when raising capital through preference and Debentures i. The Board Operation Although preference shares do not have much effect on the company’s management, debentures do have. This is based on the fact that, a business with external investors needs to be run in a manner that goes in line with the aspirations of debenture holders. With this in mind, it may be quite impossible to manage a company where the lifestyle of directors is the only central part behind the business... This paper approves that the company’s declared objective is to maximize shareholder wealth. In principle, a variety of dividend policies is consistent with this aim depending on factors such as the tax position of the clientele and whether dividend policy has been used to convey information to the market. Pavlon has followed a remarkably consistent dividend policy, adhering to a constant payout ratio. At the time of listing, it would presumably have stated its dividend policy in its prospectus and unless specified otherwise, shareholders would have been justified in expecting continuation of this policy. A switch in dividend policy so soon after listing is certain to offend at least some portion of its clientele. This essay makes a conclusion that The stand point of Director C is based on the argument that all shareholder amounts and returns on investments should always be ploughed back to create more wealth. Besides, his argument to maintain dividend is aimed at boosting more capital for the company and evade on paying taxes on some taxable dividends. For instance, the Director seem to have considered the rate of taxes on both capital gains which at times is not taxed and dividends which are usually taxed at the incomes marginal rate. However, with this process shareholders stand too loose more than if they were given the dividends. First, continuously retaining shares in the company without a close follow up on the performance of the company may create a scenario where the company managers will be having easy cash at their disposal to squander.

Israel's Collection Capabilities Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Israel's Collection Capabilities - Essay Example The Mossad has been able to collect information in Lebanon, Gaza Strip and the activity in Hezbollah. In the advent of new technology, the difficulty of gathering intelligence through OSINT and HUMINT has been elevated by satellite and other aerial vehicles such as drones and specialized aircraft. Israel recently launched a spy satellite, ‘Ofek 9’ to watch over its enemy and most notably Iran and the terrorist group that is supported by the Iranian regime. HUMINT (Capable)The use of human forces to gather intelligence is limited to Israel given that it has a large geographical coverage that it gathers intelligence from. Therefore, the Mossad officers are able to cover the Middle East but rely on other groups such as the CIA, FBI and another intelligence organ in Europe. Israel has been able to wage war on the terrorist group such as Hezbollah, Iran, and offensive in Lebanon. The activities of Mossad in Lebanese city enabled them to attack AMIA building to revenge on the terrorist attack in Beirut and Lebanon, in 1983.MASINT (Highly Capable)The Israel intelligence community has developed a MASINT system sensor with a high degree of collecting intelligence within the region as well as overseas. The country has Unmanned Aerial Vehicle called the Chariots of Fire that detect the traces of uranium elements and material used in developing of nuclear facilities. This technology has proved to be a useful tool in observing Iran ambitions of developing a nuclear weapon.

Most Important Interpersonal Skills Required of a Compliance Officer Research Paper

Most Important Interpersonal Skills Required of a Compliance Officer - Research Paper Example In some jurisdiction, complains officers can perform consultative roles such as advising and supporting business transactions as well as other functions performed by the firm. The compliance officer has the responsibility of overseeing all compliance activities and has substantial authority in an organization (Heller, Murphy and Meaney 20-24). Moreover, compliance officers have direct access to senior persons in an organization such as the company president and chief executive officers. In addition, compliance officers are required to operate independently without the influence of other persons in an organization. Therefore, compliance officers have critical roles to play in enhancing successful performance of a firm. In order for compliance officers to be effective in their duties there are certain interpersonal skill they are required to possess. This paper focuses on the most important interpersonal skills required of a compliance officer, which include negotiation skills, communi cation skills, investigative/analytical skills, qualifications, and confidence. Having appropriate negotiation skills  is important in several jobs including being a compliance officer. Compliance officers are often involved in making company policies are thus required to be able to negotiate with other department heads they may be working with. Moreover, compliance officers often negotiate with regulators such as external auditors on the measures that firms are required to take in order to satisfy the set regulatory requirements. Moreover, when disputes regarding compliance arise in a company, the compliance officers are required to settle the disputes (Heller, Murphy and Meaney 105-109; Safian 28-31). Some compliance officers are accorded great mandate and are required to negotiate with powerful stakeholders such as important political figures or producers in a firm such as financial

The Scar that the World Will Never Forget Essay

The Scar that the World Will Never Forget - Essay Example † 1 David Sedivy also asked the same way, â€Å"How does the son of an Austrian factory worker come to European power and become responsible for the deaths of as many as 35 million people?† 2 Another mind boggling question is how can Hitler, an Austrian born, become a leader followed blindly by millions of German and Aryan raced- soldiers? The magnitude of the annihilation and the atrocities committed by Hitler’s regime are definitely mind boggling. "Holocaust" is a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire." 3  What is important at this point is to share and retell this saga over and over again to all generations for them to learn insights that will guide, strengthen behaviors and enable people to think within the moral framework of a human being. In short, the question here is whether this event deserves to have a moral imperative. The succeeding discussion would support the stance that the Holocaust education, in particular, deserves to be given a moral imperative. The Saga of Gerswin Kunze during the Holocaust. Present day 21st century setting†¦ as I was doing my daily inspection of every room in our house until I reached that special room which contains our memorabilia. It houses priceless heirloom items and family bloodline photos capturing fond memories of our great family celebrations until I stopped to pause on one frame that brings back memories of being a survivor of the World War II Holocaust. Suddenly, I felt again that strange shivers and goose pimples in my arms. The deja vu feeling crept into my body which was a mixed feeling of fear, sadness and joy. It reminded me of a dark past which I really do not want to reminisce again. But people whom we loved and witnessed how they perished in the merciless executions of the Nazis kept telling us that whoever outlives this saga should tell the world about these nightmares so that this would never happen again. Suddenly flashes of events came back to my memory. This is my story. 1929 – The Germany’s Economic Depression. I am Gerzwin Kunze, from Poland born to a Jewish family in a small called Krzepicea. I was 14 years old then and still studying. My father was a businessman. One day, I did not understand what was going on. I saw my father joining angry crowds marching on the streets holding banners and shouting to air their complaints. There was one time when my father brought me along to walk on the streets with him. He brought me with him just to get a feel of what was going on. There were lots of people shouting, orations delivered. He asked me to hold tight, keep close and instructed me what to do if ever I get separated from him. Learning that I was with my father on the streets, my mother rushed to find us and immediately brought me back home for fear that any untoward incident may happen during the rally. When the right time came, I learned that Germany lost World War I and as a consequence now experienced economic downturn. â⠂¬Å"On October 29, 1929 marked the collapse of stock U.S. market triggering a worldwide economic depression.† 4 â€Å" Germany’s economy was then highly dependent on foreign trade so it was imperative that it was inevitable for it to experience economic downfall which adversely affected people’s livelihood.† 5 Its effects sparked spontaneous protests: â€Å"As production levels fell, German workers were laid off. Along with this, banks failed throughout Germany.

OPM 300 MOD 1 SLP Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

OPM 300 MOD 1 SLP - Essay Example Mc Donald’s is able to maintain its global power in due in great part to its ability to constantly modify and adapt its operations processes to the demands of its customers and of the social environment as well. One particular operations process that is constantly modified by Mc Donald’s to keep pace with increased competition and smarter, more demanding and less brand-loyal customers is the way it makes some of the items on its menu. One particular example was when Mc Donald’s considered switching to a hamburger bun that does not require toasting. Trial tests have shown that customers preferred the taste and texture of the untoasted hamburger bun (Gibson, 1995). More importantly, leaving the buns untoasted would translate into considerable cost savings resulting from reduced preparation time and the elimination of commercial toasting equipment. Considering that Mc Donald’s serves billions of buns for its hamburgers, chicken and fish sandwiches, this modif ication in one of their operations processes would rake in millions of dollars in savings for Mc Donald’s as well. This illustrates two very important aspects of operations which are customer satisfaction and competitiveness (Meredith & Shafer, 2007).

Long-Term Investment Decision Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Long-Term Investment Decision - Essay Example The following sections provide an outline of ways to meets the price problem and other issues such as, government intervention in the industry. Price elasticity of demand assesses sensitivity of quantity demanded with respect to change in price. Price elasticity is being considered in decision-making process of the company because with rise in price of food ingredients (raw material), it is naturally assumed that price of the final product will also increase. In this situation, managers need to analyze the impact of price change on product demand. The demand can be either elastic or inelastic. Elastic demand will alter with the price change, while inelastic demand tends to be static with price change. The demand of necessity product is usually inelastic in nature (Fibich, Gavious & Lowengart, 2005). For example, if the company is operating in a location where individuals are extremely busy, have no time to cook at home and are highly healthy conscious, then demand of the products of Fitness Food will be inelastic, unless the price change is unreasonably high. On the contrary, areas where fresh food is easily available and i ndividuals have access to home-made food and fresh fruits, the demand will be negatively elastic in case of price change (Senauer, 2001). Keeping in view the problem that management is facing, application of a customized pricing strategy is essential to resolve problems related to price elasticity. Optimal pricing policy is otherwise known as perfect price discrimination; implementation of this policy would mean that Fitness Food will have to segment its consumer market in different groups and have to research the amount that consumers are willing to pay for packaged food. The company has to determine optimal price and volume, which is also referred as the price and volume of the product that will maximize its profit. Fitness Food has to determine preference of its consumers and their price sensitiveness with the help of distributors and

Pricing Channels Essay Example for Free

Pricing Channels Essay Students come from a variety of backgrounds with a large and diverse base of knowledge and experience. Therefore, the primary role of the professor will be to acilitate discussions that bring out pertinent issues and to better frame the analyses of these issues. Required materials Case Packet: The case packet is available through www. study. net. Instructions to get materials from study. net are included in the last page of this syllabus, before the course schedule. Pricing Simulation Universal Rental Car Harvard Business School: Sign up instructions will be provided to you in early October. It will cost $12. 50. There will be a practice round available from Nov. 4-9. The official round will run from Nov. Other Readings: A number of readings for this class are available in full text (usually PDF) from Business Source Complete. For these articles, go to http:// www. lib. utexas. edu/, then to Research Tools* Databases Indexes to Articles †+ Databases by Subject* Business* Business Source Complete, and search on the title of the article (unless otherwise directed in the schedule). It works best if you put the title of the article in quotes. If you get a yellow box that says Find it at UT, click on the box and follow the links that have full text. Other Materials: Other materials, such as study questions for case studies, grading sheets, and lecture slides are available on Blackboard. Paperless Assignments: All assignments are to be submitted electronically rather than in hard copy and no later than 5 minutes prior to the start of class. Please send them directly to Dr. Mackie through Outlook as e-mail attachments using the following file name convention on the attachments themselves: File Name Convention [Class time]_[Your Last Name and First Initial_[Assignment name] Example: 930_SmithJ_Problem Set Example: 930_SmithJ_Brief_Case name Example: 930_TeamName_RtM Assignment Grading Blind Grading: MBA-student teaching assistants do the first round of grading on many assignments. Therefore all papers in this course are blind graded. Therefore: (a) Please do not submit assignments directly to the TA; and (b) Place your name *only* in the file name of the attachment.

Analysis of Online Recruitment Process With TAM

Analysis of Online Recruitment Process With TAM ANALYSIS OF ONLINE RECRUITMENT PROCESS FOR JOBSEEKERS USING TECHNOLOGY ACCEPTANCE MODEL(TAM) 1) S.Munzarin, 2) A. Manimegalai 3) G. Latha, 4) B. Sindhuja ABSTRACT I.INTRODUCTION Today, online recruitment has become a major tool for many organizations. However, little is known about jobseekers reactions to this new technology. This article is aimed at developing a web-based and central recruitment Process system for the HR Group of the company. Some features of this system will be creating vacancies, storing application data, and Interview process initiation, Scheduling interviews, storing Interview results for the applicant and finally Hiring of the applicant. This online website provides jobseekers to register themselves by attending the registration exam. Reports may be required to be generated for the use of the HR group. This paper provides an insight for jobseekers on the effective use of e-recruitment website and strategy to attract potential jobseekers for employment in reducing the manual work of HR correcting the Test, Short-listing the candidates, Informing the candidates etc. Data gathered from 332 job applicants at System Group Corp. shows useful ness and perceived ease of use – as core constructs of TAM model – are two main factors that predict jobseekers behavioral intentions to use recruitment websites. Keywords:, Technology Acceptance Model, online recruitment, e-recruitment efficient usage, jobseekers, behavioral intentions. Nowadays, e-recruitment is a method to recruit potential employees; with over 90% of Fortune 500 companies using some form of online recruiting (Feldman Klaas, 2002). Job seekers are also conducting their searches online; with over 52 million Americans have used online job searches (Jansen, Jansen, and Spink, 2005). Online recruiting and hiring as a business tool has not only changed the way companies recruit employees and how job seekers search for jobs, it has also impacted both parties involved. If the effectiveness of an organizations web site in attracting potential employees is considered to be a crucial determinant of an organizations ability to generate qualified applicants (Willianson et al., 2003), identifying the factors that influence jobseekers attraction to organization website has to be a high priority.This fact was highlighted by a recent study of college students reporting that 26% of students rejected potential employers from job search consideration because of the poor design of their web sites (Karr, 2000). This paper attempts to use Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) introduced by Davis, (1989) – as one of the most successful models explaining the user/technology adaption – to identify some factors influencing jobseekers behavioral intentions in using e-recruitment websites. The findings of the current paper not only provides an insight for managers on the effective use of organizations recruitment websites but also, by providing a sound theore tical framework, would help to eliminate the shortcomings associated with former studies in the area of online recruitment. To begin our discussion, we first review the existing online recruitment literature. We then explain Technology Acceptance Model as our research framework, and introduce the related hypotheses. Finally, we explain the practical implications of the research, as well as our study limitations. 2. TECHNOLOGY ACCEPTANCE MODEL (TAM) In IT literature, the TAM is the most influential model use to measure technology acceptance. This model is the extension of Ajzen and Fishbein’s Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), by Fred Davis and Richard Bagozzi (Bagozzi et al., 1992; Davis et al., 1989) to explain the computer-usage behavior. The main purpose of TAM was: to provide an explanation of the determinants of computer acceptance that is generally, capable of explaining user behavior across a broad range of end-user computing technologies and user populations, while at the same time being both parsimonious and theoretically justified (Davis et al., 1989, p. 985). Numerous empirical studies have found that TAM consistently explains a substantial proportion of the variance (about 40%) in usage intentions and behavior (Venkatesh and Bala, 2008), and TAM compares favorably with alternative models such as the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) and Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) (Venkatesh and Davis, 1996). As of December 2007, the Social Science Citation Index listed over 1,700 citations to the two journal articles that introduced TAM (Davis, 1989; Davis et al., 1989). TAM theorize that an individuals behavioral intention to use a system is determined by two beliefs: perceived usefulness, defined as the extent to which a person believes that using a system will enhance his or her job performance, and perceived ease of use, defined as the extent to which a person believes that using a system will be free of effort (Venkatesh and Davis, 1996). According to TAM, perceived usefulness is also influenced by perceived ease of use because, other things being equal, the easier the system is to use the more useful it can be(Venkatesh and Davis, 1996).Many researchers empirical studies have replicated and tested the model under different conditions for TAMs extended variables as general measures by explicitly including IT acceptance variables (e.g., Davis et al., 1992; Compeau and Higgins, 1995; Ma and Liu, 20 04). However, Davis et al. (1989) TAM assumes that perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness are of primary relevance for computer acceptance. In the next section, with a full introduction of these two core constructs of TAM perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness – the research hypotheses are presented and the research framework is explained. 2.1.1. Perceived Usefulness (PU) Perceived usefulness is defined here as the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would enhance his or her job performance. Within an organizational context, people are generally reinforced for good performance by raises, promotions, bonuses, and other rewards (Pfeffer, 1982). A system high in perceived usefulness, in turn, is one for which a user believes in the existence of a positive use-performance relationship. Organizations recruitment websites often support jobseekers with comprehensive job information including, salary information, benefits, rewards, and organizational programs (Cober et al., 2000). Perceiving system usefulness as antecedent of e-recruitment utilization, such as using these information and tools to enhance the effectiveness of job application, would draw the attention of many employed jobseekers into adopting the technology for job search (Tong, 2008). 2.1.2. Perceived Ease of Use (PEU) Perceived ease of use, in contrast, refers to the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would be free of effort. This follows from the definition of ease: freedom from difficulty or great effort. All else being equal, we claim, an application perceived to be easier to use than another is more likely to be accepted by users. On the contrary, a complex system, that is difficult to use, is less likely to be adopted since it requires significant effort and interest on the part of the user (Teo, 2001). As perceived ease of use has an inverse relationship with the perceived complexity of use of the technology, it affects perceived usefulness. TAM thus posits that perceived usefulness is influenced by perceived ease of use (Sanchez- Franco and Roldan, 2005). Similarly, in the e-recruitment context, jobseekers would prefer the system if it is easy to use compared to other methods of job applications. 2.1.3. Behavioral Intention Bagozzi et al. (1992), believe that new technologies (e.g., recruitment websites) are complex, Thus, people form attitudes and intentions toward trying to learn to use the new technology prior to initiating efforts directed at using (Tong, 2008). Sanchez- Franco and Roldan (2005) study found that the relationship between perceived usefulness and behavioral intention was strong among goal-directed users. Consequently, this study relates PEOU to PU and PU to BI with the following hypotheses: H1: Perceived Ease of Use (PEU) positively influences Perceived Usefulness (PU) in Erecruitment adoption. H2: Perceived Usefulness (PU) positively influences Behavioral Intention (BI) to use  organizations e-recruitment website. Therefore, given empirical tested studies of modified TAM and the significant causal link among the three constructs by previous researchers, the author attempts to use Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to test these highly validated studies with PEOU, PU, as independent variables and BI as the dependent variable  for this study. The research framework is also illustrated in Figure 1. Figure1. Research framework forjobseekers e-recruitment technology adoption 3. METHOD 3.1. Participants The participants of the study were 347 applicants for System Group Corp. While having more than 1200 employees, System Group Corp. is considered to be the biggest active organization in manufacturing software technologies in Iran. The data was gathered in a two-month period, during which 421 applicants logged on to the organizations website. From among these applicants, 347 questionnaires were gathered by the researcher, and at the end, a number of 332 questionnaires were analyzed (response rate 82%). The respondents of the study included 63 percent male, 73 percent single, and the majority of them ranged between 21 to 25 years old. Participation was completely anonymous and on a voluntary basis. 3.2. Procedure The researchers did not have access to the actual application data due to stringent privacy regulations. Rather, data on the measures were collected using an online questionnaire that was administered subsequent to the online application procedure. we will first describe the data that were collected as part of the application procedure followed by a description of the research questionnaire. 3.2.1. Application Procedure Applicants could search for positions on the System Group official website. Here, candidates could find general information on the organization and its conditions of employment. More specifically, information could be found on the organization’s culture, structure, development opportunities, and benefits. All applicants had to fill out an online form after they had accepted a privacy statement. The form consisted of information on contact details, date of birth, gender, education, and qualifications obtained from college, work experience, and skills. In addition, applicants had the opportunity to give additional information and to upload personal documents such as a curriculum vitae. 3.2.2. Research Questionnaire After completion and submission of the online application, a questionnaire was presented in a pop-up window on a separate web page. This questionnaire was also accessible via a link which could be found in an email confirming the receipt of the applicant’s online application. The confirmation email was sent immediately after the online application had been submitted. A short introductory text accompanied the link to the online survey. 3.2.3. Measures The questionnaire was preceded by a short introductory text. Anonymity and confidentiality of the participants’ responses were emphasized. It was explicitly mentioned that responses could not affect the selection process in any way and that the company did not have access to individual responses. It took respondents approximately 5 min to complete the questionnaire. The questionnaire was offered in both Farsi and English languages. Translations were made from English to Farsi, which were checked by native speakers. All responses were assessed on the following five-point Likert scale (1=completely disagree, 3=neutral, and 5= completely agree), with the exception of items on general background information. The questionnaire was consist of 18 items. To assess behavioral intentions (BI) the measure of Tompson et al., (2008) were obtained. This construct was assessed by five items. Example item is I would like to work for this organization. Perceived ease of use and perceived usefu lness each assessed using five (Williamson et al., 2003) and eight (Palmer, 2002) items scales, respectively. Where applicable, the original wording computerized process was replaced by online application process for consistency throughout the questionnaire. Example items are My interaction with online application processes was clear and understandable; and The organizations recruitment website provides all the information required to apply for job. At the end of the survey, space was provided for remarks or suggestions and respondents were thanked for their participation. 3.2.4. Analysis The descriptive characteristics of the sample (Table 1) were assessed using SPSS 11.0 statistical package, based on the guidelines provided by Dimitriadis (2003). The research model (Figure 1) was tested using structural equation modeling (SEM) using LISREL 8.7. As it has been suggested, the structural equation approach has several advantages over traditional analyses (Bagozzi and Yi, 1989). Data were analyzed using the two-step approach suggested by Anderson and Gerbing (1998) and. In the first step, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed, which helps assess the adequacy of the measurement model (Chang, 1998), or in other words, [. . .] the measurement models (or confirmatory factor models) specify how hypothetical constructs are measured in terms of the observed variables (Lin and Lee, 2004). In the second step of the data analysis, the structural model is tested using SEM; structural equation models specify causal relationships among latent variables (Lin and Lee, 2004 ). 4. EXISTING SYSTEM In recent days, staffs are monitoring the candidates during the recruitment process which is nearly the waste of time. Currently all the jobseekers register for their jobs in prior which are stored in the database of the company due to which more space is consumed. After registration all the jobseekers attend the aptitude test and proceed further but only certain candidates are selected for the further process. Presently recruitment is done manually. That is if a company or organization needs employees they make an announcement through newspaper or websites. People who are eligible send application to the organization or company. From these applications they are called for interviews or tests. After tests company has to do short listing manually. From these shortlisted candidates, they are called for interviews. After interview short listed candidates are employed. So it’s all a time consuming procedure too. It may take one month or long. People around the world cannot apply. This is very convenient because in the manual system there are lot of difficulties in conducting and managing a recruitment exam, short listing, maintaining staff etc 5.PROPOSED SYSTEM Online Recruitment is aimed at developing a web-based and central recruitment Process system for the HR Group for a company. Some features of this system will be creating vacancies, storing application data, and Interview process initiation, Scheduling Interviews, Storing Interview results for the applicant and finally hiring of the applicant. Based on the outcome of the exam the jobseekers will be shortlisted. The details of the examination Date of the examination will be made available to them through the website. People all around the world can apply and register. It has made all the process easy. System Analysis is the detailed study of the various operations performed by the system and their relationships within and outside the system. Here we are using the TAM model for analysing the system performance. ADVANTAGES This paper enables the users to have the typical examination facilities and features at their disposal. It resolves typical issues of manual examination processes and activities into a controlled and closely monitored work flow in the architecture of the application. This multi platform solution brings in by default, the basic intelligence and immense possibilities for further extension of the application as required by the user. The system makes it friendly to distribute, share and manage the examination entities with higher efficiency and easiness. It is a comprehensive resource for finding a job online. 6. DISCUSSION In the final model of the study, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use have strong path coefficients( 0.71 and 0.82 respectively) in relation with behavioral intentions. Thus, from a causal point of view, the results of structural equation modeling confirm a strong causal relation between PEU and PU in one hand, and PU and BI on the other hand. The linear relation between PU and BI suggests that the perceived usefulness construct has a direct positive effect on applicants behavioral intentions to use recruitment websites. 7.CONCLUSION In todays competing world, the success of recruitment efforts in organizations is bound with attracting an appropriate group of qualified job applicants using the least possible sources. E-recruitment – as a growing recruitment tool – is not an exception. Therefore, identifying factors that influence e-recruitment success in attracting the qualified group of applicants should be a high priority. Using a TAM model in the area of erecruitment, this study tried to identify two of the most influential factors on the applicants behavioral intentions to use organization recruitment website and the consequent employment decisions. 8. REFERENCES Kroustalis, C., (2012). Internet Recruitment: Examining the Roles of Information, Attitudes, and Perceived Fit on Applicant Attraction, A thesis presented to Graduate School of Clemson University, (P. Raymark, R. Pak, C. Pury Eds.), Proquest Information andLearning Company.37. Lin, H.; Lee, G. Chatzoglou, P.; Vraimaki, E. (2009), Knowledge-sharing behavior of bank employees in Greece, Business Process  Management Journal, 15 (2), 245-266. Venkatesh, V., Bala, H. (2008). Technology accpetance model 3 and a research agenda on interventions. Decision Science , 39 (2), 273-315. Tong, D. (2008). A study of e-recruitment technology adoption in Malaysia. Industrial Management Data Systems , 109 (2),281-300. Thompson, L., Braddy, P., Wuensch, K.E-recruitment and the benefits of organizational web appeal. Computer in Human Behavior , 24, 2384-2398. Bock, G.; Kim, Y. (2002), Breaking the myths of rewards: an exploratory study of attitudes about knowledge sharing, Information Resources Management Journal, 15 (2), 14-21. Bock, G.; Kim, Y, Breaking the myths of rewards: an exploratory study of attitudes about knowledge sharing, Information Resources Management Journal, 15 (2), 14-21.

The History Of Absenteeism Management Essay

The History Of Absenteeism Management Essay When employees intentionally make absence from work it is known as absenteeism. In todays working organisations everybody misses a day of work now and then. But when an employee misses too many days of work it can be a big problem for the organisation and this can cause serious problems when all other employees have to cover for the missing worker or in worse cases the work simply doesnt get done, which can cause low productivity or non availability of requested services, leading to bad impression on companys position and name. People often tend to have different perspectives or attach different meanings when viewing the topic of employee absenteeism. Absenteeism occurs when the employees of a company do not turn up to work due to any scheduled time off, any illness, any injury, or any other reason. If we look back the history, there is only a small written history of absenteeism in business literature, apparently because until the 20th century businesses had a clear rule, No work: no pay. Then labour unions forced the companies into agreements to allow employees to take time off from work for illness or vacations and the practice of offering paid sick days become widespread. These practices still vary among companies and union contracts and normally there is an average of four to ten sick days per year is standard. Companies have realized that human absence management policies are cost effective; even many companies were unwilling to off paid leave to their employees. In fact, there is an estimate in the current studies regarding absenteeism that those company who have effective employee absence strategies can reduce their overall payroll costs by atleast 10 percent. ABSENTEEISM COSTING THE BUSINESSES Most recent studies on absenteeism have claimed that missing employees cost companies millions of pounds in lost revenue each year. We know that absenteeism can be quite costly. It has been estimated that in the United States alone, absence causes a loss of 400 million workdays per years. Based on this estimates, several researchers have attached a dollar value to this of between $26 and $46 billion per year (Steers and Rhodes, 1978; Goodman and Atkin, 1984a). In Canada, this figure probably approaches $8 to $10 billion. The Confederation of British Industry (CBI, 1999) has carried out a survey and used its membership base to survey both private and public sector employers. This survey showed that the average number of working days lost per employee in the UK in 1998 was 8.5 days, which represented 3.7% of all working time available. Another important correlation showed that absence was positively associated with the size of the organisation, that is absence rates were higher in large organisations than in small organisations. In calculating time lost as a percentage of actual working time available, the survey was based on a 228 days working year. This figure is derived from taking out of 365 days, 104 days for weekends or rest-days, 8 public holidays and 25 days annual leave. For many organisations the figures of 228 would be reasonably proximate, but for others, a revised base would need to be used, for example within the education service. Table 1.1 Absence rates for manual and non-manual employees 1998 (1997 figures in brackets) Average Best performing quartile Employees Days lost % of working Days lost % of working time time Manual 9.4 (10.8) 4.1 (4.7) 5.5 2.4 Non-manual 7.6 (6.8) 3.3 (3.3) 3 1.4 All 8.5 (8.4) 3.7 (3.0) 4.1 1.8 Source: CBI, Focus on Absence, 1999. The other most recent survey on the common causes of absenteeism by BBC has revealed that within the UK 93% of workers cite cods and flu as their common reason for being away from their work. Recently BBC has reported that absenteeism is costing  £10.2bn a year and that is mainly through employees minor illness, stress and family responsibilities. A survey of more than 530 firms for the Confederation of British Industry estimated that 200m days were lost through sickness absence last year, an average of 8.5 days per worker. According to an annual survey report of CIPD in 2009, it is stated that the annual cost of absence, is highest in the following sectors of different organisations within UK: Average  £ per employee/year Public Sector  £784 Manufacturing and production employers  £754 Non-profit organisations  £698 Private services organisations  £666 However, the conclusions showed that there are only 41% of employers who are monitoring the cost of employee absence, a figure which has remained persistently low over the past few years.   Another company Hewitt Associates  which is based in  Lincolnshire,  Illinois  is a global  human resources  (HR)  outsourcing   and  consulting  firm which delivers a wide range of integrated services to help companies manage their total HR and employee costs and improve their workforces has confirmed that absenteeism is costing the organisations in UK more than  £1000 per employee almost every year. INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS International comparison of absence rates is equally useful and informative. The title sick man of Europe was once given to Britain because of apparently poor industrial relations record. This title can be given to any other country now as absence rates in the UK are among the lowest of any EU member country. Table 1 illustrates this point: Country Short-term Absenteeism rate Long-term Absenteeism rate Denmark UK Austria Sweden Ireland Norway Netherlands France Germany Belgium Italy Portugal 3.5 3.6 4.1 4.4 4.5 5.0 5.5 5.6 5.6 5.8 6.9 8.0 9.1 5.5 12.7 3.0 10.4 13.3 11.1 6.5 6.6 5.5 11.2 Source: Adapted from CBI, Focus on Absence, 1989 THE MOST COMMON CAUSES OF ABSENCE There are two different classes of employees, manual and non-manual and the most common main causes of sickness absence for both of these classes have been identified as: Manual Non-Manual Minor illness (cold, flu, stomach upsets headaches) Minor illness (cold, flu, stomach upsets headaches) Back pain Stress Musculo-skeletal injuries Musculo-skeletal injuries Home/family responsibilities Back pain Stress Home/family responsibilities Recurring medical conditions Recurring medical conditions Injuries/accidents not related to work Other absences not related to ill-health The latest studies and surveys have revealed that an increase in stress related absence is continuing in number of employers these days. For both manual and non-manual workers, employers perceived that minor illness is the major cause of absence from the workplace. THEORIES RELEVANT TO ABSENTEEISM Over the past many years, there have been many studies and surveys conducted to discover what motivate people. The most recognised theories are Taylor (1856-1917), Mayo (1880-1949), Maslow (1908-1970), McGregor (1906-1964) and Herzberg (1923-2000). Because motivation is very much important not only at work but almost in all part of life too, there are so many new theories which are constantly being developed. MOTIVATION THEORY The word motivation is used to describe certain sorts of behaviour. The purpose of motivation theories is to predict behaviours. Motivation is not the behaviour itself, and it is not performance. Motivation concerns action and the internal and external forces which influence a persons choice of action (Mitchell 1987). Motivation encourages people happily to put more effort into doing something. Well-motivated employees will always feel fulfilled and happy in their respective workplace. Furthermore, the employees are to be expected to be more productive and generate work of a higher quality with lower rate of absenteeism. EXAMPLE A recent case study shows that Siemens, a well known company worldwide, believes that well motivated employees can add extra power into work in order to accomplish the necessary outcomes because they believe that their work is extraordinary. The motivated workforce is more confident to take pride in what they do and off course there is low rate of absenteeism because employees are happier to go to work. HERZBERGS TWO FACTOR THEORY Herzberg used the critical incidental method and his original study was chosen because of the growing importance in the business world and his study was consisted of interviews with 203 accountants and engineers  from different industries in the Pittsburgh area of America. The responses to these interviews were generally consistent and revealed that there were two different sets of factors affecting motivation and work. This led to the Two Factor Theory of motivation and job satisfaction. On the basis of his survey, Herzberg reported that employees tended to describe satisfying experiences in terms of factors that were intrinsic to the content of the job itself. These factors were called motivators and included such variables as: Achievement Recognition The work itself Responsibility Advancement and growth According to Herzberg theory these motivators who also can be known as satisfiers were associated with  long-term  positive effects in job performance while the hygiene factors (dissatisfiers) consistently produced only  short-term changes in job attitudes and performance, which quickly fell back to its previous level. In summary,  satisfiers describe a persons relationship with that she or he  does, many related to the tasks being performed.  On the other hand dissatisfiers have to do with a persons  relationship to the context or environment  in which she or he performs the job.  Ã‚  The satisfiers or motivators relate to what a person does while the dissatisfiers relate to the situation in which the person does what he or she does. So in summary according to Herzberg if the basic needs of an employee are being met at an organisation, the employee will always be willing to come to work and will be happy doing his job. Herzberg argued that extra compensation only work in the short term and other hygiene factors only avoid dissatisfaction and that satisfaction comes from intrinsic motivators. EXAMPLE Royal Bank of Scotland has implemented Herzberg Two Factor Theory and its working successfully at the bank. RBS has put the following few factors from Herzberg theory: The good work by employees  gets recognition The employees at RBS have a combined logic of success when the whole business does well They get extra responsibility and progress through regular performance reviews RBS rewards their employee when they do well in their work RBS also introduced flexible working for its all employees and these are adapted to suit the local needs of each RBS centre. Through its right to work flexibly theory RBS is continuously motivating its employee as if they are unable to come to the work on time due to an appointment, they always can come late and can cover their work through job sharing, home working or variable working hours. ATTRIBUTION THEORY Attribution theory suggests that we observe a persons behaviour and then try to establish whether internal or external forces caused it. If it is judged to be internal, it is seen as being under the persons control; if it is judged to be external, it is seen as a result of the situation. Attribution is said to be subjected to a number of considerations, because we judge actions in a context. For example, we judge how distinctive behaviour is and whether behaviour is unusual for a particular person. Attribution theory is very much relevant to absenteeism as for example the employee is absent from work and the circumstances are that his or her attendance record is exemplary, then the behaviour could be considered unusual and an external cause (that is, that the behaviour is outside the control of the individual) will be attributed. If the absenteeism fits in with the general pattern of behaviour, then an internal attribution will be attached (that is, it will be seen as being under the persons control). EQUITY THEORY The Adams Equity Theory is a simple theory which differentiates an employees inputs and the outputs. According to the theory, the judgment to this fair sense of balance serves to make sure that a strong and useful connection is achieved with the worker, with the overall result being satisfied and motivated workers. This theory states that optimistic outcomes and high levels of enthusiasm are likely only when employees recognize their behaviour to be fair. The thought behind Adams Equity Theory is to hit a strong balance here, with outputs on one side of the level and inputs on the other both weighing in a way that seems reasonably equal. If the balance is in favour of the employer then few employees may work to bring balance between inputs and outputs on their own, by asking for more reward or recognition. Others will be demotivated, and still others will look for substitute employment.   DOUGLAS MCGREGOR THEORY X THEORY Y According to Douglas McGregor there are two different views of human beings. He described under his Theory X, that workers come to work to do the work and raise no questions and receive their pay. While in his Theory Y he believed that workers are dedicated and want responsibility. McGregor strongly recommend that employers should treat all the workers as Theory Y because they will be more efficient. EXAMPLE Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) in UK has implemented McGregors Theory Y, as NDA wants its employees to be self-directed in their work and are always ready to accept high levels of responsibilities. NDA claims that with the help of this theory their employees absenteeism level is very low as everyone loves their work and they are more responsible to be at work on regular basis. ABSENTEEISM MEASUREMENT To measure worker absenteeism the most obvious way is to record how many days have employees not come in to work. The companies should have some sort of clock-in or accountability set-up making this step relatively simple. Once the numbers are available, surely it would be interesting to know how many of those workers were genuinely ill. Measuring absenteeism can serve as many as four purposes for organisations, which includes the following: Administering payroll and benefits programs Planning human resource requirements for production scheduling identifying absenteeism problems measuring and controlling personnel costs (Gandz and Mikalachki, 1979) Actual assessment and analyzing is a key aspect of managing absence effectively. Organisations must assess if they have complications with absenteeism, its extent and find out the best way to handle it. In the latest Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) absence survey, there were only a less than half of employers who monitor the cost of absence of their employee,  and there were just under  half of organisations who have set a target for reducing absenteeism and the only 38% of organisations benchmark themselves against other employers.   To analyse particular arrangement of absenteeism and underlying the basis, employers should acquire and use data, for example, the management approach of an appropriate manager or an increase in workloads. This can also provide the evidence of how absenteeism impacts on the bottom line and why it value investing in an effective absenteeism management programme. MEASURE TIME LOST To evaluate absenteeism there are a number of different measures that can be used, each of which can gives information about the different aspects of absenteeism. Some of the factors are described as under: LOST TIME RATE Lost time rate measure  articulate the percentage of the total time available which has been lost due to absence: Total absence (hours or days) in the period  x 100   Possible total (hours or days) in the period   For instance, if the total absence of the employees in the period is 155 person-hours and the total time available is 1,950 person-hours, the lost time rate will be:   155 x 100 = 7.95%   1,950   This can also be calculated separately for the individual departments of different groups of employees to uncover particular absence problems within an organisation. FREQUENCY RATE The frequency rate method shows an average number of absences per employee, which is expressed as a percentage. This does not give any indication of the length or duration of each absence period, nor any indication of employees who take more than one spell of absence and it is calculated as under:   No of spells of absence in the period  x 100   No of employees   For example, if an organisation employed on average 110 workers in one month, and during this time there were a total of 24 spells of absence, the frequency rate will be:   24  x 100 = 21.82%   110   To find out the individual frequency rate, we have to count the number of workers who take at least one interval of absence in the period, rather than to total number of intervals of absence. BRADFORD FACTOR This method expresses the persistent short-term absence for individuals, by measuring the number of spells of absence, and is therefore a useful measure of the disruption caused by this type of absence. It is calculated using the formula:   S x S x D S = number of spells of absence in 52 weeks taken by an individual   D = number of days of absence in 52 weeks taken by that individual   For example:   10 one-day absences: 10 x 10 x 10 = 1,000   1 ten-day absence: 1 x 1 x 10 = 10   5 two-day absences: 5 x 5 x 10 = 250   2 five-day absences: 2 x 2 x 10 = 40   The trigger points will differ between organisations. The underlying causes will need to be identified for all unauthorised absence. ABSENTEEISM CONTROL POLICIES The companies should have clear policies in place which support their business objectives and culture and this is the first step to managing absenteeism efficiently. Under the current legislation employers are required to provide their staff with knowledge on any terms and conditions relating to inadequacy for work due to the sickness or injury, including any arrangement for sick pay. Effective absenteeism policies must spell out clearly employees rights and responsibilities when taking time off from work due to sickness or any other reason. These policies should include: A clear idea of what absence is, how it can be defined and how it might be measured. An indication of the scope and scale of absence in the UK and elsewhere by sector, region and industry type An account of the likely causes of absence and how they relate to individuals, jobs, organisations and wider factors. Consideration of the legal environment within which absence must be managed. Examination of the equal opportunities implications of absence management, which particular regard to the Employment Relations Act 1999. Discussion of the ways in which work might be made more flexible to suit the needs of both the employer and the employee. Consideration of how a strategy for managing absence might be developed. Examination of the range of tactics that an employer might employ for the management of absence. HOW TO MANAGE ABSENTEEISM Before we discuss how to manage absenteeism we look the types of absenteeism. There are many other reasons why people take time off from work. These can be categorised as under: Non permitted absence or continuous lateness Long-term sickness absence Short-term sickness absence (uncertificated, self-certificated, or covered by a doctors fit note which replaced the sick note from April 2010) Other authorised absences:  for example,  annual leave; maternity, paternity, adoption, or parental leave; time off for public or trade union duties, or to care for dependents; compassionate leave; educational leave. Other than these above categories of absenteeism there are two main types of absenteeism, know as short term absenteeism and long term absenteeism. We discuss in detail how to manage these two main types of absenteeism: MANAGING SHORT-TERM ABSENCE Temporary absence is also known as absence interventions. The most effective interventions in managing short term absence include the followings: A proactive absence management policy Return-to-work interviews Disciplinary procedures for unacceptable absence levels Involving trained line managers in absence management Providing sickness absence information to line managers Restricting sick pay Involving occupational health professionals The most common method which is currently being adopted by many organisations is return-to-work interviews which can help identify short-term absence problems at an early stage. These return-to-work interviews provide an opportunity to managers to start a dialogue with staff over underlying issues, which might be causing the absence.   Tim Holden, the Managing Director of  FLUID, draws on more than 10 years experience as an award-winning recruiter and trainer. FLUID works with organisations to enhance their attractiveness to both current and future employees. Holden suggests that: The use of disciplinary procedures for unacceptable absence may be used to make it clear to employees that unjustified absence will not be tolerated and that absence policies will be enforced.   According to CIPDs recent survey it has been revealed that, only 12% of organisations use attendance incentives or bonuses as a tool of absence management according to our latest absence survey. MANAGING LONG-TERM ABSENCE The current studies and researches on long term absence have shown that absence of  eight days or more justify about one third  of total time lost through absence and absence of four weeks or more accounts for more than 15%. Consequently it is very vital that organisations have an approved strategy in place to help their employees to get back to work after a continuous period of sickness or injury-related absence. The knowledge of potential disability discrimination claims is also critical these days.   LINE MANAGERS ROLE To control and reduce the causes of absenteeism, line managers have a substantial role to play, either directly or indirectly. How managers behave is very important because it has a significant effect on employee health and comfort. Many recent researches show that line managers are the type of employees most likely to be reported as bullies within organisations. Management style within an organisation is also one of the top causes of stress at work.  Ã‚  The role and responsibilities of the line manager in the management of absence should be clearly defined. However, these days the role of line managers is paramount. It is the line managers responsibility to manager his or her department or unit. Therefore it is his/her responsibility to see that these resources are used as effectively as possible. This means that levels of attendance should be good and absence kept to a minimum. The line managers should follow the companys approach to management style, organisation and allocation of work, as this will be a vital part of any strategy to control absence. In addition it is his/her responsibility to follow the company absence polices and procedures to staff. In any organisations the managers need good communications skills to encourage employees so that they can feel free to discuss any problems they may have at an early stage so that they can be given support or advice by the managers before matters escalate. According to all the recent studies and surveys it is stated that despite of all the importance of line manager/supervisor involvement, there are only 50% organisations are training their line managers to get the skills needed to do this effectively. The organisations should train their line managers to get the following skills to handle the absenteeism properly and they should have a good knowledge of: Their companys absence policies and procedures What is their role in the absence management programme How to act upon any advice given by the doctor to the employee. All the related legal and disciplinary aspects of absence including potential disability discrimination issues   How to maintain absence record-keeping and understanding facts and figures on absence The role of occupational health services The proactive measures to support staff health and wellbeing Operation (where applicable) of trigger points Development of return-to-work interview skills Development of counselling skills. In addition, the line manager will be one of the main influences on an individuals view of the company attitude to absence. It is therefore important that the actions and words of line manager support the companys position. It a difference attitude is being taken on the management of absence, whether more strictly or leniently, it will cause problems for the individual manager and for the organisation. Line managers must be able to rely on the support of senior management for decision they take in line with the companys policy, their responsibilities are as under: To effectively organize and allocate work; To use an appropriate management style; To ensure that all staff are adequately trained for their role; To communicate the absence policy and procedures to all subordinates; To apply policy and procedures in a consistent and fair manner; To deal with requests for prior approved absence; To keep accurate and up-to-date records of absences; To investigate reasons for unexplained absences; To carry out return to work interviews; To instigate disciplinary procedures, when required; To provide adequate feedback to senior management; To ensure adequate personal development and training to be able to meet these responsibilities effectively. To support staff health and wellbeing by taking proactive measures for occupational health involvement To be a part of the absence management programme By restricting sick pay To changes work patterns or environment To induct rehabilitation programme There are also four typical components in the recovery of absence and return-to-work process, which are discussed as under: An up-to-date contact with sick employees   The line manager should ensure that a regular contact is maintained using both sensitive and non-intrusive approaches with the employee. This approach must be agreed with the member of staff and management and, also where appropriate, with the union or employee representative. Workplace controls or adjustments   There can be some obstacles which may cause delay, interruption or difficulties to an employees return to work. A risk appraisal can analyse measures or adjustments to assist workers return and stay in work. For example: Allowing a steady or step-by-step return-to-work, for example,  promoting an employee from part-time job to full-time job over a period of weeks To change work arrangement or management style to reduce work pressure and to give the worker more control Modifying the employees working hours, for example allowing flexible working hours to accommodate his/her family demands Co-coordinating the employees mobility. The use of professional advice and treatment   These days there are many occupational health professionals in every country, they can be consulted because they can play a major role to evaluate the reason for absenteeism, and also can carry out employees health assessments, and can assist the managers in preparation for a return to work. Return-to-work planning The management should have a return to work plan agreed by the employee and the line manager, and any other staff which is likely to be affected and this plan needs to include: The goals of the plan, alternative working hours, or a alternative job role The time period of the plan Information about the new working arrangements The reviews that will need to be made to make sure the plan is put into practice The dates when the plan will be reviewed This can be helpful if the management appoint someone who can coordinate the return-to-work process. This also can include the colleagues of the absent worker who can inform him/her of the progress, so that everyone appreciate the situation, as well as easing the alterations back to work and maintaining working relationships. TACTICS FOR CONTROLLING ABSENTEEISM There are many tools that can be used as a part of a structured plan of absenteeism. We discuss some of the tools to control absenteeism. In practice, these tools will be used in isolation but more probably several will be used in combination. PRE-EMPLOYMENT SCREENING: All reasonable steps should be taken to ensure that the employed staff is likely to be good attenders. One of the best indicators of likely future attendance rates is past attendance rates as many employers believe that pre-employment screening is a vital tool in absence management. There are number of simple steps that an employer can take to reduce the risk of employing a poor attender: Ask for information about absence on the application. For example, How many days absence have you had over the last two years? Ask about absence on reference requests. Ensure that those invited for interview are made fully aware of the expectations of the job. This would include duties, hours of work, work environment, standards of performance and conduct. Avoid the temptation to oversell the job at interview as this will result in disappointment and disillusioned employees and they will be more likely to be absent. Use pre-employment medical examinations to identify any potential problems. Note that disablement is not a reason not to employ an applicant, and employers must take great care to observe the terms o