This chapter considers aspects of the working lives of graduates, firstly, by examining absence and how graduates and management responds and, secondly, the extent to which the disabled graduates have experienced supportive work environments. Finally, the chapter concludes by exploring bullying and harassment; in particular there is a focus on understanding how the context for bullying, impacts on those involved and steps taken to manage this impact.
Absenteeism
Absenteeism has been considered within this study because of the impact that an impairment can have on work attendance. The manner in which absence is managed is thus likely to be of central importance to the disabled graduates’ experience of work. This next section explores disabled graduate attitudes towards absence due to ill-health and their experiences related to negotiating and taking sick leave.
Work intensification, harsh economic climates, together with a degradation of employment conditions has led to more stringent controls on employee absence within organisations (Miller, 2013). As the literature review demonstrated, whilst there was a rise in absence due to ill-health, resulting in disciplinary action, managers were generally dissatisfied with organisational policies on absence and were uncomfortable in enacting these (Baker-McClearn, 2009). Furthermore, graduated return-to-work and early intervention are reported as helpful in the return- to-work process (James et al., 1997). Additionally, disability leave facilitated the return-to-work but take up was reported as being low among employers (Simkiss, 2005). As a result of the literature review, the data addresses the graduates’ experiences of absence policy, which policies were more supportive and why.
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Given that the literature review also established that presenteeism was a concern for employers (Demerouti et al. 2009) and there are increasing incidents of presenteeism during economic downturns (Miller, 2013) it was important to address presenteeism in the data. Was presenteeism a feature of the disabled graduate experience and if so, how did it present itself?
Firstly, how many participants reported absenteeism? Six participants in total talked about absenteeism, all of which was long term. Table 6.1 illustrates which participants reported taking sick leave, the type of leave, management responses and the impact of that response.
Table 6-1: Experience of Absenteeism
Participant Type of Absence Management
Response
Impact on the Participant
Dot Long Term Initiated grievance
procedures
Stress and union involvement
Sandra Long Term Lost her job because it
was fixed term contract
Stress and financial problems
Joanna Long Term Lost her job because it
was a fixed term contract
Stress
Charles Long Term Supportive Nil
Georgia Long Term Supportive Guilt that her students
were not getting taught.
Pam Long Term She lost her place at
university
She had no confidence
Table 6.1 shows that four out of the six participants had negative experiences and two had positive experiences of absence.
Positive and Negative Experiences
The pattern in the data was that there was a mixture of positive and negative experiences in the sample. Dot, for example had negative experiences of sick leave policies and had been disciplined as a result of her absence. The quote below shows
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how Dot was initially meek about taking sick leave, but as time progressed and management became less supportive she began to fight back for her rights.
Dot was working in a highly unionised organisation. She was on “on first name terms” with her union representative and was very grateful for their support. At the time of the interview her disciplinary action was on-going. Dot reported, however, that she was reluctant to fight the case and file an official grievance, although if absolutely necessary she would look into her options.
Sandra and Joanna also had negative experiences of sickness procedures, which resulted in Sandra and Joanna losing their jobs.
Absence on fixed term contracts led Sandra and Joanna to lose their jobs. Both Sandra and Joanna felt this treatment was unfair and they felt lost and stressed because of unemployment. This point is of particular concern, because if absence is an issue for disabled employees and research shows disabled people are more likely to be employed on non-standard employment contracts (Schur, 2003) then they could be at greater risk of losing their jobs than non-disabled employees.
Because the first time they disciplined me for being sick I just rolled over a bit. I didn’t have anyone with me, I just took a friend in. After I passed that stage I wore myself into the ground and the next time I got sick I started off all meek and mild “yes, yes I will do that” and they promised stuff they didn’t deliver and I thought “right” and when we got to stage two the union came in.
DOT
I had been on a fixed term contract so that expired whilst I was on sick leave. So that left me with the difficulty of having no job to go back to.
SANDRA
… so I went off sick and then I lost my job because of that. A clause in my contract that I had failed to notice and I was heading towards some big operations and I knew I was going to be off for 6 months after the operations, so I left that and the job just folded. JOANNA
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While the data had cases of negative sick leave experiences, the evidence also showed pockets of positive experiences. Charles and Georgia had positive experiences of sick leave and were both employed in the same industry – education.
While Charles was happy to take as much absence as he needed Georgia was more reluctant. Georgia worried that her students were not getting taught while she was away. It would seem that this difference in orientation to absence is a result of the participants’ different personalities.
Given the data shows variation in the experience of sick leave, is it possible to explain why this variation exists? Georgia and Charles, both working in the public education sector, had flexible, supportive absence policies. Charles believes that absence is common in education and that is why he was treated so well. Miller (2013) found that absence levels in education were the highest in the public service, matched only by the health sector. These results suggest that if all staff are prone to taking sick leave, then a disabled employee taking sick leave would not stand out, potentially resulting in a positive experience of sick leave. Those who have supportive, flexible absence procedures are more likely to have a positive experience of absence.
The data indicates that the presence of a union has some mediating effect on absence. Charles and Georgia, working in the education sector worked in a highly unionised workplace. Dot, on the other hand also was working in a highly unionised organisation but did not have a positive experience. It is suggested, however, that if
… in teaching there is never any malice or anything, people go off sick, that’s it, there is such a high record of sickness in school; quite often with stress related disorders. CHARLES
They encouraged me not to, in the college where I was working; they said “take some time off and see how you feel”. And I did that for a few months but I actually felt really guilty because the college was keeping the job open, so my students weren’t really getting taught…
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Dot was not a member of a union her experience would have been worse. All of the absences reported were long-term, therefore it is not possible to ascertain if the length of absence would cause a different management response. In summary, therefore, it is suggested that these findings reflect wider evidence in the literature.
Disability Leave and Graduated Return to Work
As discussed in the literature review, disability leave is a management policy whereby disabled employees are allowed time off for disability related absence that does not get recorded on their sickness record (Simkiss, 2005). From the HR interviews it became clear that very few HR managers knew what was meant by disability leave and when the concept was explained, it was disregarded.
The most common response was that disability leave was not required because sick leave policies could be altered to accommodate disabled employees.
Many HR managers reported that it was the responsibility of line managers to implement sick leave policies. This approach can be problematic because discretion of the line manager results in non-uniform treatment of employees. As a result, devolution to the line may lead to a weakening of equality outcomes, such as found in Dickens and Colling’s (1994) study of British Gas. The role of line managers is discussed, at length, in chapter eight.
The data showed that organisations failed to see the value in disability leave because they perceive flexible sick leave policies are adequate to support disabled workers. This point illustrates that HR managers have missed the key difference
We don’t have a disability leave policy. There are certain triggers that go off in the sickness policy but for disabled employees we can move these triggers back. This is done at the discretion of the line manager, with HR guidance in more complex cases. HR Personnel, Private Sector, responsible for all nine protected characteristics.
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between sick leave and disability leave and supports Simkiss (2005) that the availability of disability leave remains low.
The literature showed that after a period of absence a graduated return-to-work programme was most effective at integrating chronically sick workers back to work. The thesis only had one case of a graduated return-to-work programme. Sandra began by working 23 hours a week and increased to 27 as she recovered. Sandra was pleased that she had this option and reports it being central to her gaining employment after being ill with ME. Sandra’s positive experience of graduated return-to-work shows the importance of graded return-to-work and reflects the findings of wider research on gradual return-to-work programmes and their benefits (James et al., 1997). However, given that there is only one case of return-to-work programmes conclusions are tentative.
Presenteeism
The literature review discussed presenteeism and how it affected workers and the data suggests presenteeism was an important factor in the participants’ experiences of work.
The research shows that various reasons for presenteeism occur. Mainly, the disabled graduates did not want to appear weak, or to take time off for disability related issues. Amelia, a self-employed music teacher, was struggling to manage her impairment effects and her workload. She found that she needed to take time off from teaching students but did not take time off because she did not want to let the students down and wanted to seem capable.
These findings potentially question work by Aronsson et al., (2000) and Hansson et al., (2006), who offer different reasons for presenteeism, such as being in work to gain favour with the boss and the employees feel irreplaceable. In contrast, the disabled graduates did not want to be absent because they did not want to be judged
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as weak. This finding could be specific to disabled employees when facing stigma associated with disability in the workplace. This is a stigma that non-disabled workers are unlikely to face.