Absence Management

First of all, we need to be clear on what we are going to talk about here. As most of the employers know, absences come in different shapes and sizes and it could last from days, weeks, months, or even years. On the other hand, what is the biggest cause of this absences?

According to an analyst, all of the types of absences, including an industrial action and a compassionate leave are accounted for more than 80 percent of the absence bills of every company.

It does not matter if it is a long or a short term absence, a staff absence really affects the company negatively. However, why do you need to bother about it and how are you going to manage it?

How it affects companies

Most of the companies are aware of direct cost of a sickness absence, occupational sick pay, statutory sick pay, temporary cover, and paying overtime. However, there are still some knock on effects.

·         It lowers morale – The staff will usually have to cover for the absent colleagues. As an effect, this is going to make their workloads to shoot up and might cause their morale to fall.

·         Absences can also lead to mistakes – Whenever a staff needs to cover the job of other people, it could always lead to various mistakes that could jeopardize a relationship with the clients.

·         It can lower the productivity – Whenever the employee is always calling sick, this can delay different projects and this means that there is no consistency in the team and this can lead to a low levels of productivity.

Even those employees who rarely call sick could suffer to a low motivation if their co-employee is regularly absent. While the minor illnesses are the most common cause of the short term illnesses by far, it was also reported that the number of people who are absent because of mental health and stress has increased over the past year. Based on this report, the main causes of these sickness absences are

Minor illness

More than 4/5 of the organizations have reported that the minor illnesses like flu, colds, headaches, migraines, and stomach upsets are the most common reasons for a short term absence in their organization.

Back pain and injuries

Musculoskeletal injuries and back pain like repetitive strain injury and neck strain are cited to be a cause of either short term or long term sickness, both for the non-manual and manual workers.

Ways to manage absence

Based on a survey by the People Management in the year 2013, 84 percent of the Human Resource professionals have stated that they have viewed the sickness absence management to be an essential strategic issue for the organization.

Whenever you are trying to tackle a long term or a short term absence, the best point is to begin monitoring your absences. If you have an idea what you are dealing with, it is pretty impossible for you to manage. The good news is it does not have to be really difficult, if you are a small company, you can have some spreadsheet so you can monitor the absences of the staff.

For more information: www.leavemonitor.com