So what is absenteeism? It is simply when an employee of a
company does not come to work due to scheduled time off, certified
illness, uncertified illness, injury or any other reason which is
deemed absenteeism. Both the direct and indirect impact of
absenteeism is too significant for companies not to be measuring;
when attendance is not being measured, it cannot be managed.
So what keeps employees away from work? According to a 2007
survey, the most common causes of unscheduled absenteeism are shown
in the table below.
The challenge facing both employees and employers is that
personal and family demands are greater than in the past whilst at
the same time employer demands have increased. Employers are
expecting more commitment from employees who have to do more due to
fewer staff and economic pressure. At the same time your workers
need time to care for themselves and their families. Employers who
accommodate working from home, flexible hours and flexible annual
leave will benefit from lower-than-average absence rates. Employers
need to find initiatives to help their employees balance the dual
demands on their professional and personal lives.
It is a fact that the more unhappy employees are, the more
reasons they'll find not to come to work - morale influences the
reasons employees take unscheduled leave. There is a direct
connection between the morale of a workforce and the degree of
absenteeism present. Companies reporting poor to fair morale are
more likely to experience unscheduled absenteeism than those with
good morale - up to 70% of unscheduled absences (excluding illness)
are by employees with poor or fair morale.
There needs to be balance - too much pressure placed on employee
absenteeism could result in employers being faced with presenteeism
issues - when employees come to work even though they are ill.
Although their intentions are good, they will deliver poor
productivity, increase safety and quality risks and risk infecting
other employees. Some of the reasons employees show up for work
even though they are sick are:
too much work no-one available to cover their workload don't
want to use paid annual leave want to save sick leave in case they
need it later
The problem of presenteeism can be solved by ensuring the
workplace culture and policies do not encourage the wrong
behaviour. Employers who enforce absenteeism policies with
disciplinary action make it difficult for the employee to do the
right thing. Employees also need to know that absence is taken
seriously and that the employer does want to help. Employers can do
this by creating a culture of trust at work, where managers are
approachable to openly discuss matters such as stress and family
responsibility.
Companies should be monitoring their absence rates carefully,
measuring the true cost and causes and looking for solutions.
Measuring the cost is not just the salaries paid to employees who
are absent, but also the cost of productivity lost, overtime
required to fill the absent employee's position and any other costs
associated with absence.
Finding the right solution can be a challenge. Whether your
company is a growing mid-sized venture or a global enterprise with
tens of thousands of employees, using a computerised leave
management system which integrates with your Payroll will enable
you to measure what unscheduled absenteeism is costing you. Educos
offers an innovative mix of web-based solutions and outsourcing
options which will enable you to do more than manage the
administrative challenges associated with leave and absenteeism.
Using the tools that are available, you will have all the
information at your finger tips to measure not only your
absenteeism rates and trends, but also analyse the cost that will
impact the bottom line.
With more than 25 years' of experience, we continually advance
our solutions to meet your needs today and in the future, ensuring
that our solutions allow you to realise your software's strategic
potential. Our fully integrated, flexible and totally customisable
solution for managing all aspects of HR, Leave and Payroll
management on an in-house, SaaS or outsourcing model is best suited
to your requirements. Our solutions are quickly deployed and can be
tailored to provide the flexibility and process automation that is
required to run your business more efficiently. Our solutions are
able to integrate with any other third party software and part of
our implementation strategy is to define what system integration
would be required and include this as part of your total
solution.