Managing employee attendance

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/01/2022 (1392 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Have you ever thought about the rate of employee absenteeism in your department? Your organization? Is it a little problem and/or a significant problem, especially now that we’re back in the grips of the pandemic with the emergence of the Omicron variant? Are you even keeping track of absenteeism? If you were told that on a normal day, approximately three per cent of your workforce was absent, what impact would that have? Guaranteed, this rate of absence creates lost productivity, it impacts service to your community and could cause morale problems as your remaining employees pick up the work left behind. Just listen to all the stories of how absenteeism is creating havoc in our public services as well as major businesses.

Keep in mind that when you are tracking employee absenteeism, you must also include absences due to on-the-job injury, short-term disability and family or medical leave, as well as absences that are only a few days in duration. As well, keep in mind that employees who have frequent intermittent absences are three to four times more likely to access your short-term disability plans. As well, employees that do leave on short-term disability are more likely to make greater use of other group health benefits, thus increasing organizational costs.

Let’s face it, employee absenteeism costs your organization a lot of money. One good example I’m aware of was a large manufacturing company that discovered their payroll had increased by $1 million due to excessive absenteeism. To rectify this problem, a human resources manager was assigned to a one-year project with the main goal of contacting all those away from work, developing an early return-to-work program, and getting people back to the workplace and productive.

This experiment proved that looking at employee absenteeism as simply the “cost of doing business,” was simply no longer the way to do things. That’s because it prevented managers from quantifying and qualifying the full impact of their employee absenteeism. It prevented any time being spent on assessing the value of potential solutions such as assigning someone to monitor this issue closely and ensuring that statistics were reviewed by managers on a monthly basis. And, it prevented managers from actively “managing” their chronic absentee employees.

Once you start tracking the costs of excessive absenteeism, you will be shocked at what evidence you will find. Look at the hard dollar costs for salaries, benefits, replacement workers, and term employees needed to fill the gaps. Take time to look at and quantify the soft-dollar costs such as reduced morale, employee stress and the poor public relations that might result from dissatisfied clients and/or angry community members. If you can believe it, some research reports suggest the total cost of employee absences, both unplanned and planned, is more than twice the average employer’s total cost for employee health-care benefits!

However, these costs can be reduced by careful planning, implementation of specific attendance and workplace wellness policies, data collection strategies, providing management training on tackling absenteeism and implementing accommodation strategies.

So where do you start? The quickest and most efficient way to discover absenteeism issues is to conduct an historical research project to determine the extent of the problem in your organization. Determine the level of absenteeism over a three-year time frame and figure out if the problem is improving or getting worse. Isolate each department and determine where there are higher than usual absentee rates. Interview the managers and get their feedback on the problem. Determine if there are issues related to workplace ergonomics, the nature of the work and/or how the tasks are carried out. Are there workplace hazards that are contributing to the issue and if so, how can these be addressed? Is absenteeism an employee issue or a workplace structure issue? And during this pandemic, try to determine just where the absences are occurring and determine if safety precautions are not doing their job. Then, use your statistics to explore the nature and extent of the problem and then meet with the management team to discuss organization-wide solutions as well as departmental solutions.

Work with the human resource manager to review your reporting system. Are you using daily or weekly timesheets? How is absenteeism reported? How is it authorized and recorded within the HR or payroll department? Review your attendance policies with respect to when a manager should step in to begin taking a more aggressive approach. Review just how you are calculating your absenteeism and ensure it fits your organization.

For instance, you can calculate absenteeism by department, work shift, type of employees, by job family or by other factors such as seasonal patterns of absenteeism. It is also wise to separate data according to short versus long term absences. Determine an incidence rate based on the number of your employees during a given reporting period. (Usually, this is the number of absences multiplied by 100, then divided by the number of employees) You can also calculate an “inactivity” rate where work is not being produced because an employee is absent and there is no replacement.

Once you have identified your absence problem, the key is to put strategies in place to help overcome this challenge. These include taking disciplinary action for excessive absenteeism when necessary, verifying illness through physician reports, management training and reporting on absenteeism, developing and implementing some form of employee reward and recognition program for good attendance, and promotion of health and wellness programs in the organization.

Over the last couple years of the pandemic, organizations have learned how quickly sickness can spread within an organization. Therefore, it is important your policies do not encourage an employee to return to work when they are still feeling ill. This is known as “presenteeism” and is now seen to have much more negative effects on the entire work population. The key is keeping all employees healthy.

Other policy strategies include allowing banked time of paid leave, family and/or personal leave of three to five days where the employee does not need to document an illness, implementation of alternative work arrangements, job redesign and/or increased safety measures. Also, take time to focus on how to improve employee morale through engagement activities and ensuring a positive workplace culture.

Finally, when structuring your management training programs, be sure to include a review of all applicable legislation related to employee absence and illness in respect to the need for accommodation and ensuring human rights and employment legislation is followed carefully. This is especially important during this time of pandemic-related illnesses. Absenteeism management and the assurance that backup plans are in place is critical to ongoing success in this pandemic world. Don’t delay, study your organization and make plans to tackle this issue.

Source: Managing Employee Attendance, SHRM website.

Barbara J. Bowes, FCPHR, CCP, B.Ed, M.Ed. She can be reached at barb@bowesleadership.com