Correlation of Ethical Conduct within an Organisation with the Absence of Employees from Work

Abstract

The working environment of an organization in which employees perform their activities is a social system. It creates certain employee attitudes that are greatly influenced by the organisational or working culture and norms and the work ethics they define. The latter is actualised in certain organisational rules and standards and the manners and methods of employee communication and conduct. All aspects of conduct are relevant to employees, as behaviour directly influences the development of an (in)appropriate attitude to norms and working culture and, consequentially, also to absence of employees from work. Ethical conduct of employees is closely linked to the “strength” of the work ethic in an organisation and an analysis of studies shows that this is important also from the perspective of employee absence. This fact is confirmed by numerous studies that explain the statistical relationship between work ethics and employee absence. The INODEL study also used certain questions to establish the moral-ethical relationship of employees in Slovenia to medical absenteeism. On the one hand, the study checked whether employees ever abused sick leave and to what extent. On the other hand, the study sought to establish whether employees showed a moral-ethical attitude to work and performed their duties despite the fact that they could have been absent from work due to illness, injury or care for a family member. This article therefore presents certain results of the INODEL study that was performed among employees in the Republic of Slovenia.