Employee Voice Mechanisms and Their Implications for Employee Absenteeism in Tanzania: A Study of Dar es Salaam Manufacturing Industries

Abstract

Employee voice contributes to a variety of outcomes in manufacturing industries worldwide. However, although this claim is often repeated in the literature, empirical research on the link between employee voice mechanisms and employee absenteeism remains scarce. This study examines how employee voice mechanisms influence employee absenteeism in Tanzanian manufacturing industries in Dar es Salaam. Survey data were collected from 126 randomly selected manufacturing industries in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, using a cross-sectional study design. Human resource managers were the unit of observation, and manufacturing industries were the unit of analysis. Descriptive statistics and the Poisson Regression Model aided data analysis. The results show that employee voice mechanisms, such as formal surveys, suggestion boxes, joint consultative committee meetings, collective bargaining, and general meetings, have a negative and significant influence on employee absenteeism. In contrast, newsletters, intranet-shared information, and email use did not. This finding indicates that workers' attendance in manufacturing industries improves when employees have opportunities to express their problems to their employers. Therefore, manufacturing industries should use formal surveys, suggestion boxes, joint consultative committee meetings, general meetings and collective bargaining to reduce employee absenteeism. Other employee mechanisms, such as the intranet, newsletter, and email, should be reviewed and improved.