scholarly journals Fight against Absenteeism in the Public Service in France and the United Kingdom: Towards a Comprehensive approach of the Problem

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claude Barreix

The purpose of this study was to put forward the concerns related to absenteeism due to sickness in the public services and the ways to fight against it.Based on two examples drawn from UK Royal Mail company and French local authority  experiences,  this study considers first of all two main means of tackling absenteeism, currently used in numerous entities both public and private: coercive measures through medical controls and financial incentives. Even if these bodies got good results in using these two levers, these turned out not to be sufficient enough, on their own, to really tackle absenteeism.However Royal mail and certain French local authorities have met this better challenge in implementing a comprehensive approach of the phenomenon which did not neglect repressive and reward actions but introduced the measure and monitor of sick leaves. They also introduced in their human resource management appropriate managerial measures, particularly related to communication, and specific actions tending to improve the employees’ health and well being at workThe study presents some assessing elements tending to show the efficiency of a holistic approach of absenteeism. Keywords: Absenteeism Control; Incentive; Managerial Actions; Health, Well-Being At Work

2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nándor Makkos

Administrative activity is present in all walks of life and it has a universal character nowadays. This article has been tabled to draw attention to the discriminatory erosions that sometimes appear as a hiding place in public administration, which may appear as minor deviations in childhood, but may lead to disintegration of organizational unit in adulthood. On the other hand, however, the quality of life of workers is impaired because workers exposed to psychosocial risks show significantly higher levels of health risk than those who are not. The most common symptoms are stress, sleep problems, fatigue and depression (URL1). I have tried to approach the relationship between instruction and discrimination holistically, from the slightest socialization error of man to the most serious crime. I believe that a person's discriminatory behavior is characterized by the inclusion of the milder deviations of a person to the more serious ones. Genocide certainly involves its four milder stages, the physical assault transmission, discrimination, verbal expression, and discriminatory thought. We have drawn attention to the harmful effects of ’invisible’ in its form, but abnormal in its content. Perhaps avoidance is one of the most insidious behaviors of our time, which, by distorting personality in childhood, can put its mark on the daily life and public service of an adult. In the case of discrimination, sanctions of a non-legal nature which undermine the offender's social authority may also be significant, e.g. mocking, exasperation, appearance, speaking, which are more common than legal sanctions and can cause a great deal of torment to the perpetrator and his environment, we need anti-instructional discrimination in the public sector to ensure good public services and well-being of public service employees. In the bureaucratic system, it is precise regulation that can be used to combat discrimination by instruction, because it not only serves to coordinate and fix the best method, but also ensures standardized, equal treatment of individual cases (Gajduschek, 2000, 44.). It is also worth noting that enforcing the prohibition of discrimination, its principles, its loyalty, impartiality, responsibility or professionalism, and the confidence of users of public services in the public service is in the interests of professional administration.


2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 689-705
Author(s):  
Jennifer Jane Hardes

During the late 18th to late 19th centuries, practices of duelling and prize fighting were criminalized in Britain, while boxing remained legal. Through a genealogical method, this article locates discourses, primarily law, medicine, policing and science, to trace these mechanisms of criminalization and legalization. Focusing on the jurisdictions of the United Kingdom and the United States, I argue that the legalization of boxing did not simply emerge as a part of a ‘civilizing process’. Rather, I explain these processes of criminalization and legalization in the context of biopolitical rationalities of governance. In contrast to its contemporaries, boxing was rationalized as a scientific ‘sport’ that fitted with wider biopolitical visions of public health and well-being: allegedly it did not breed violence or threaten the public peace but was instead practised by skilled technicians. However, the biopolitical management of human life within rational and scientific form comes at a price: life’s ontological need for expression, and the drive to experience and witness boxing’s corporeal excesses remains a ghostly presence threatening to undo the sweet ‘science’.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaarina Nikunen ◽  
Jenni Hokka

Welfare states have historically been built on values of egalitarianism and universalism and through high taxation that provides free education, health care, and social security for all. Ideally, this encourages participation of all citizens and formation of inclusive public sphere. In this welfare model, the public service media are also considered some of the main institutions that serve the well-being of an entire society. That is, independent, publicly funded media companies are perceived to enhance equality, citizenship, and social solidarity by providing information and programming that is driven by public rather than commercial interest. This article explores how the public service media and their values of universality, equality, diversity, and quality are affected by datafication and a platformed media environment. It argues that the embeddedness of public service media in a platformed media environment produces complex and contradictory dependencies between public service media and commercial platforms. The embeddedness has resulted in simultaneous processes of adapting to social media logics and datafication within public service media as well as in attempts to create alternative public media value-driven data practices and new public media spaces.


2007 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-97
Author(s):  
Rune Wigblad ◽  
John Lewer ◽  
Magnus Hansson

Both the public and private sectors have since the 1980s relentlessly cut the size of their workforces. The downsizing has regularly been reported to lead to closure of a whole or a part of a corporation or organization. Some studies which have analyzed the closures have reported that remarkable, counterintuitive improvements in labor productivity occurred during the time-period between the closure announcement and the final working day. Testing an elaborated cybernetic model on a Swedish case study, and on an exploratory basis, this paper proposes a holistic approach to generate a better understanding of this phenomenon. The main holistic pattern is a new order where management control is replaced by more “Self-management” on the plant level, and very strong psychological reactions based on feelings of unfairness.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 3671
Author(s):  
Jameel R. Al-Obaidi ◽  
Khalid H. Alobaidi ◽  
Bilal Salim Al-Taie ◽  
David Hong-Sheng Wee ◽  
Hasnain Hussain ◽  
...  

Nutraceuticals are a category of products more often associated with food but having pharmaceuticals property and characteristics. However, there is still no internationally accepted concept of these food-pharmaceutical properties, and their interpretation can differ from country to country. Nutraceuticals are used as part of dietary supplements in most countries. They can be phytochemicals which are biologically active and have health benefits. These can be supplied as a supplement and/or as a functional food to the customer. For human health and longevity, these materials are likely to play a vital role. Consumption of these items is typical without a therapeutic prescription and/or supervision by the vast majority of the public. The development of nutraceuticals can be achieved through many bioresources and organisms. This review article will discuss the current research on nutraceuticals from different biological sources and their potential use as an agent for improving human health and well-being, as well as the gaps and future perspective of research related to nutraceutical development.


2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 467-486
Author(s):  
Laura Peutere ◽  
Antti Saloniemi ◽  
Simo Aho ◽  
Jouko Nätti ◽  
Tapio Nummi

The connection between high-involvement management (HIM), entailing heavy employee involvement, and employee well-being is a controversial and widely discussed topic. Clarifying how job satisfaction and stress are connected to HIM and job control (the control employees have over their work), this study is based on data from two Finnish sources: an employer survey investigating the extent of HIM within an organisation, and employee assessments of job control, stress and job satisfaction. Logistic regression models were used as the study method. In contrast to previous Finnish studies, our findings show that HIM seems hardly to benefit employee well-being. Especially in the public sector, the correlation between extensive HIM and employee well-being turned out to be negative. However, HIM in the private sector was positively related to job satisfaction. As expected, a high level of job control was regularly associated with greater well-being.


Work ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Annick Parent-Lamarche ◽  
Maude Boulet

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound effect on all aspects of society, including mental health. Many employees have had to pivot suddenly to teleworking to prevent the virus from spreading. While teleworking may have some negative consequences, it may also represent a human resources practice that may improve employee well-being. OBJECTIVE: The study main objective was to determine if teleworking played a moderating role in the relation between potential stressors and employee well-being during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic when working from home. This was based on the theory of conservation of resources. METHODS: Multivariate regression analyses were conducted with Stata 13 software to determine the contribution of potential stressors on employee well-being, as well as the moderating role of teleworking on a sample of 480 Canadian employees. Data were collected once for white and blue collar from both public (67.08%) and private (32.92%) business sectors. RESULTS: Results indicated that work-life imbalances, workload, and marital tension were associated with lower levels of well-being. On the other hand, teleworking and household income were associated with higher levels of well-being. Teleworking also moderated the differences in well-being between the public and private sectors. Teleworking in the public sector seems to increase employee well-being. Conversely, working on-site in the public sector seems to decrease well-being. CONCLUSIONS: Employers need to proactively address work-life imbalances, workloads, and teleworking to maintain employee well-being. Specific recommendations are offered to ensure that teleworking remains positive for employee well-being both during a pandemic and afterward.


2022 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 923-950
Author(s):  
O. S. Pavlova

The article is devoted to the study of the Islamic concept of happiness from the standpoint of psychological science. Two approaches to the understanding of happiness, originating in Antiquity, are considered: hedonistic and eudemonistic; the cultural specifi city of happiness is investigated through the prism of ethnocultural values. It outlines the views on psychological health and well-being in Islam, as well as the views on social and individual predictors of happiness of medieval and modern Muslim scholars. The author concludes that the concept of happiness and the idea of it has its own specifi city in diff erent cultures. The concept of happiness among Muslims is directly related to their religious values and worldview, as well as to the peculiarities of ethnic culture. Since Muslim communities are collectivist, the happiness of an individual is seen as closely related to the public good. For a Muslim, the path to happiness is associated with improving his character and the formation of moral values and behavior. Modern Psychology and Psychotherapy are developing the ideas about moral psychology and the ways of its formation as the basis for the psychological wellbeing of an individual.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-55
Author(s):  
Salome Sakvarelidze

Abstract The motivated employee represents the essential condition of any organization’s success. Public and private sector managers should constantly work toward coordinating and increasing employee motivation in order to ensure the timely and effective implementation of the plans set by the organization. Accordingly, proper assessment of processes and prompt determination of individuals’ driving motives are needed. Studies have shown that public service employees from all around the world face challenges, such as: incompatibility of knowledge, experience and position, as well as hard and lightweight work. Consequently, public managers should be aware of modern human resource management methods that can be used in effective and efficient ways to increase employee work quality. The main purpose of the paper is to determine the current situation of the public sector in Georgia. In addition, the research seeks to identify and examine the factors that influence employee demotivation and to determine under what conditions motivation can be a worthwhile investment in a public organizations. Methodologically, the work is based on analysis of the available literature and the results of the research statistically processed based on the survey example of 449 respondents from different Georgian ministries selected by a random simple.


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