Question

Assume that you were just hired as a manager at a company where there are absentee problems with some of the employees. Discuss at least two kinds of reinforcement that you could use to help resolve the situation. Next, summarize at least two strategies that you could use for the frequency of providing reinforcement. Discuss which option you anticipate will work best and explain why.

Answer 1

Absenteeism is the term given when an employee is habitually and frequently absent from work. This excludes paid leave and occasions where an employer has granted an employee time off.If I am a manager, I’ll have likely experienced cases of absenteeism. we should know that staff will be absent from time to time, such as for illness, jury duty, or bereavement. However, when absenteeism is frequent and excessive it begins to become a problem.

Absenteeism in the workplace affects both employers and employees

Some consequences for employers include:

• Reduced productivity levels.
• High administration costs.
• Increased labour costs if you hire replacement temporary workers.
• Understaffing which could lead to poor customer service.
• Poor morale among colleagues. This will be particularly prevalent if employees constantly have to fill in for absent staff and if they don’t see any retributions for absence.

The consequences for the absent member of staff

• Loss of pay for their time off.
• Reduced productivity on their return to work due to a need to ‘catch up’.
• If absenteeism is frequent and unexplained, the member of staff could even face dismissal.

Reduce Absenteeism in the Workplace

Create a clear attendance policy and set expectations

Our attendance policy should explain how to report absences, the procedures in place surrounding absences, and our policy for recording absences. It should also contain information about how we will follow up on repeated absences and the repercussions for excessive absenteeism.

we should discuss the policy with all members of staff and ask them to sign it to show their understanding.

The policy will act as a resource to your employees about your expectations. Aim to be consistent and follow the attendance policy in all possible situations.

Provide support

If an employee is absent due to personal issues, like bereavement or mental health problems, we should provide support both when they are absent and on their return to work. Support will likely make them feel happier to return to work earlier and prevent repeated absenteeism.

We could also consider offering your employees time off in lieu and/or flexible working time. This will ensure people feel like they get a good work-life balance and that we value their needs.

Law of Effect

The law of effect principle developed by Edward Thorndike suggested that responses closely followed by satisfaction will become firmly attached to the situation and, therefore, more likely to reoccur when the situation is repeated. Conversely, if the situation is followed by discomfort, the connections to the situation will become weaker, and the behavior of response is less likely to occur when the situation is repeated.

Quantitative Law of Effect

An evolutionary reinforcement-learning algorithm, the operation of which was not associated with an optimality condition, was instantiated in an artificial organism. The algorithm caused the organism’s behavior to evolve in response to selection pressure applied by reinforcement from the environment. The resulting behavior was consistent with the well-established quantitative law of effect, which asserts that the time rate of a behavior is a hyperbolic function of the time rate of reinforcement obtained for the behavior. The high-order, steady-state, hyperbolic relationship between behavior and reinforcement exhibited by the artificial organism did not depend on specific qualitative or quantitative features of the evolutionary algorithm, and it described the organism’s behavior significantly better than other, similar, function forms. This evolutionary algorithm is a good candidate for a dynamics of live behavior, and it might be a useful building block for more complex artificial organisms.

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