To tackle absenteeism effectively, says Paul Roberts, you must establish a solution that lets you detect and address the situation early to avoid short-term absenteeism becoming a long term issue.
1 Ensure you have a clear policy in place
Your company policy should be easy to understand and not open to varying interpretations. It should outline details such as when an employee is entitled to be absent from the workplace, at what time the employee must inform their line manager that they are absent, and where employees should go for support.
2 Act on day one
The first action to manage absenteeism should be on the first day that an employee is not present in the workplace. Check the facts surrounding the absence and address any resulting workload issues to ensure business continues. Line managers should highlight the services available to support the employee such as health insurance policies, company doctor services or an employee assistance programme. Ensure your line managers are fully supported and have the relevant training to ensure they keep within the employment legal framework, such as the Disability and Discrimination Act (DDA), Medical Reports Act and the Data Protection Act.
3 Review at week three
This trigger point is to catch cases that start to become long-term. Fifteen days of absence is nearly twice the national average. A system that highlights an employee who is absent for 15 days will ensure that the organisation is supporting the employee, their family, and facilitating return to work.
Discussions should focus positively on when the employee is likely to return. If the case is serious, occupational health professionals can be utilised to give an independent medical opinion. Managers can base their business decisions on this information and take it into account if the DDA applies.
4 Monitor trends
Trends often emerge among absent employees. Working practices, times of opening and commercial deadlines can all play a part, rather than illness itself. Ensuring you record reasons for absence will enable you to identify trends in the workplace to help avoid future absentee cases.
5 Nominate departmental responsibility
Integrating health services is the key to providing the best and fastest support to the employee, resulting in an early return to work. In many organisations, a range of departments have some input into health services, such as compensation and benefits, health and safety, and HR. Often, these services overlap, leading to duplication. Nominate one department to be responsible for all health providers, insurers and services, to achieve economies of scale and to avoid duplication.
6 Involve others
Absence management is a team effort and should not fall to just one person. Involving relevant parties in the solution will relieve the burden and highlight that tackling absenteeism is a normal part of working at your organisation, and not a flash-in-the-pan project.
7 Communicate
We've all done it, not felt particularly well and coughed and spluttered our way down the phone saying we can't come in today. Although usually genuine, absenteeism is an increasing problem in the workplace, causing many days lost of work where staff aren't actually physically ill or really unable to come into work, but they're judging themselves as being not fit enough to come in. Where do you draw the line?
1. Make sure everyone knows the policy
If you make sure that your company's sickness and absence policy is known and adhered to, this reduces the chance that someone calls in sick, then says they "didn't know" the procedure. Usually people can self-diagnose up to a point, but after a certain amount of days, they need a doctor's note or dispensation from another professional saying that they are unfit to work. If someone is not really ill, they cannot get away with this without leaving them open to disciplinary practises. If you have evidence that they not only know the policy but have agreed to adhere to it, you are on safe ground to assert yourself appropriately and give a due warning.
2. What happens if someone is ill and contagious?
Let's say someone has been off with the flu - a genuine concern - and now they feel all right and want to come back in, but they are still coughing and sneezing. It's a fine balance to make the decision between allowing them to return and potentially give the flu to the rest of the healthy staff in the office, or take the risk that they are no longer contagious and to come back in and mingle with their workmates. If you're ever not sure of whether you should allow someone to return to work after an illness, consult your HR department who should have a deeper database of knowledge on such issues.
3. How to deal with someone you know isn't sick
There are a very small number of employees who will, unfortunately, abuse the system. You can usually tell if this is happening - if England are in the World cup final at 3pm on a weekday you're apt to find a lot of people suddenly developing a mystery illness in that time. It depends if you know about it and consider it being "passed over" (after all, you may want the day off, too). Hangovers are a frequent illness culprit and if your staff member almost always calls in sick on a Monday rather than any other day, you should keep an eye on their absence record.
Even worse, if someone has called in sick and you see them out shopping on the high street, what do you do - confront them or go straight to HR? Depending on your relationship with that member of staff, it's your call on how to treat them.
Conclusively, treat most absence as real and genuine but be on the lookout for those how abuse the system, and you won't be the first manager to initiate disciplinary hearings because of those much-maligned occurrences of absenteeism.
