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Portable Sick Leave in the Victorian Building Industry: Managing Cumulative Employee Benefits in the Absence of Employment Security
Author(s) -
Underhill Elsa,
Worland David
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
asia pacific journal of human resources
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.825
H-Index - 33
eISSN - 1744-7941
pISSN - 1038-4111
DOI - 10.1177/1038411103041003002
Subject(s) - entitlement (fair division) , business , job security , accrual , sick leave , compensation (psychology) , relevance (law) , labour economics , employee benefits , industrial relations , marketing , economics , accounting , finance , management , work (physics) , engineering , microeconomics , mechanical engineering , psychology , earnings , political science , law , psychoanalysis
The trend away from full‐time permanent employment raises questions about the relevance of traditional approaches to managing and compensating employees. Employment in the Australian building industry is characterised by short‐term, project‐based employment. Employers and unions in the industry have adopted alternative compensation models to accommodate the short‐term nature of employment, most notably through portable benefit schemes. In 1997, the Victorian building industry extended the range of portable benefits to include sick leave. Empirical evidence suggests a relationship between employee absence behaviour and accrual entitlement models. Research reported here supports this link, and suggests that both employers and employees can benefit from an alternative, portable, approach to accrued entitlements. Employers can benefit because employees may be less likely to take an instrumental approach to their entitlements. Employees benefit because they are able to accrue entitlements for the period they remain in the building industry, irrespective of the extent to which they change jobs.