Abstract:
Absenteeism is “non-attendance of employees for scheduled work when they are expected to
attend”. Absenteeism is making a heavy impact on the daily activities of the organization. In
addition, it exerts a considerable indirect influence on organizational effectiveness, employee
administration and dissatisfaction of the workers who attend the organization regularly on
time. Many research studies have been conducted on studying absenteeism in many countries
including Sri Lanka. However, most of them have been focused on large scale enterprises and
less attention is paid on cottage, small and medium scale businesses. This research fills this
gap and studies the Impact of Absenteeism on employee satisfaction in the bakery industry in
the Southern Province, Sri Lanka. The research was done as a survey among 40 small scale
bakeries in the province. The sample was selected according to the convenient method due to
the absence of a complete list of the population. A structured questionnaire with open and
close-ended questions was used for the study and it included questions on general information,
employee attitudes towards leaders, job satisfaction and absenteeism, reasons for the
absenteeism of the respondents. The survey results showed that the inter-relationship between
influencing factors on absenteeism and satisfaction of employees. Most of workers (55%)
were below 30 years; married (90%); 75% of workers represented ordinary levels or below
and no any workers with higher qualifications. Majority of them had five years experience
(75%).Only 15% of workers come to the Bakeries more than 2km and 60% of them come by
buses or walking. Most of them (75%) had good health while only 25% of workers had weak
health; 25% of workers had taken leaves without approval and firms had taken actions (85%)
to prevent this unethical behavior. Further, it is notable that the majority of workers (75%) had
strong or positive attitudes about their managers or owners. Therefore, they are satisfied with
their bakeries and their activities. Results of this study ultimately concluded that the attitudes of workers towards managers or owners are positive and Absenteeism Has siffiaficaant grqpqy.t ^
on employee satisfaction.
