Business Case Study -- USA Motors Why Essay

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Business Case Study -- USA Motors

Why didn't the paid absence plan work?

The paid absence plan did not work primarily because it lent itself to abuse. Instead of providing incentive to give appropriate notice of absences, it allowed employees to exploit the mechanism as a means of increasing their pay. The main reason that was possible is that the paid absence mechanism would have required a corresponding increase in the organization's regulation and control of the other rules pertaining to absenteeism. For example, instead of imposing a mandatory requirement that any "discretionary" absences must be "use-or-lose" absences, the existing policy allowed them to be accrued and retained after the fiscal year. When combined with the fact that the organization already liberally allowed "unexcused" absences, that removed any possible incentive to "waste" any additional paid absences and created a very natural incentive to do precisely that: to accrue unused paid absence days and continue using established procedures to permit traditional unexcused absences.
At the very least, the paid absenteeism approach absolutely required that the organization prohibit other types of unexcused absences without loss of pay. The paid absence concept should have included specific provisions according to which any unexcused absence would automatically be charged off against any accrued paid absence days. Similarly, the paid absence concept should have been narrowly limited to its specific purpose: to excuse a certain number of otherwise unexcused absences. It never should have allowed the accrual, retention, and carry-over of unused absences. Finally, there should have been rules limiting their use so that they were not usable during the days immediately preceding or following scheduled holidays or vacations. There is no reason that the mechanism would have to be applied without restriction or on an all-or-none basis. The organization had no obligation to allow the mechanism in the first place. Therefore, prohibiting paid absences from….....

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