Business Week has a good article about electronic monitoring and employee absenteeism. There are more IS-related tools that support absence management.
Some companies give their employees flexible policies, like IBM. At other firms like Best Buy, output matters as much or more than hours worked.
Some organizations give employees a single pot of hours to address sick time and vacation time. It’s up to the employee to manage this stash in a reasonable manner.
Bad things happen every day, and usually without respect for anyone’s schedule.
Some of this discussion seems applicable to absenteeism in the classroom. Instructors often speak of students who feigned an illness, a hard drive crash, or a professional crisis as an assignment came due. I usually take students at their word, unless I find out otherwise. Most graduate students want to do the right thing.
On the other hand, I’ve heard of instructors who have feigned illness, personal crises, technology problems or a deadline as an excuse for ungraded papers, sloppy lectures or missed appointments.
It’s difficult for instructors when something goes wrong.
When I was an MBA student, my organizational behavior professor graded one of our paper assignments during a flight – and he then left the graded papers on the plane, without recording the grades. All but one of my students could reprint their papers from a floppy disk and resubmit the assignment for a new grade. The student who handed in a typewritten paper, and didn’t have a backup copy to resubmit, got a C, as I recall.
The following year, our advertising professor died a week before our final presentations. It was a very good course, but we were all surprised and sad when we heard what had happened. The assistant dean came in to watch and grade our groups.
I always build some slack time into my course schedules, so I can compensate when it’s necessary.
Of course, rising expectations has something to do with all of this, too. We expect other people to be available on email or mobile phone when we call.
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