6 Effective Strategies for Managing Employee Absences and Improving Productivity
Employee absence is costing your business. It can seem like you can’t control sickness and while a certain amount of absence will be genuine, there are ways you can reduce the levels of sick days in your company.
Employing effective strategies to manage absences can make a big difference in maintaining productivity. In fact, some of our clients have seen a 50% reduction in absence from applying key strategies in their business. This has resulted in considerable savings in terms of time and money.
In this blog, we’re sharing some simple strategies that can help you manage absences and improve productivity with your teams. It is the wider team, after all, who feel the added pressure to their workload when colleagues are absent.
The impact of employee absences on productivity
According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), absences at work are at a 10-year high. On average, employees are absent from work 7.8 days per year. With mental health featuring strongly as a reason for both short and long-term absences, there is much more that employers can do to reduce the potential for short-term absences to become a bigger challenge.
The more absences within a team. the more others need to pick up the slack. This can lead to other employees feeling under pressure, a risk of burnout and can lead to them becoming disengaged in their work. In some cases, the added pressure of picking up the extra work can lead to further absences in the team.
Plus, if the illness develops into a long-term absence, you may have additional recruitment costs for temporary workers or the need for overtime.
1. Understanding the reasons for employee absences
To tackle absences at work, you first need to understand why people are absent in the first place. According to CIPD research, 94% of people take short-term sick days because of minor ailments. However, these could be symptoms of wider issues in that person’s life.
Take time to understand what’s going on for them both at work and home. They may have family issues that are causing them stress or their workload could be creating health issues. Many minor illnesses are a result of a low immune system or other areas of health that could do with a boost.
You should also look for patterns in absence. If particular days of the week or times of the month are a cause for absence, then it’s time to look into why this happens.
By encouraging your people to have open, honest conversations, you create a culture of trust where they feel they can share problems with you or their line manager. This means you can build support around them and help avoid unnecessary absences.
2. Have a comprehensive absence policy
Getting the right absence policy in place will set the boundaries on what is and isn’t okay when it comes to absences. Your policy should cover how someone needs to report their absence and how often after the first day, what happens when they return to work, and how you handle excessive absenteeism and long-term sickness.
With the right policy in place, your people will know what is expected of them and your managers will all follow the same procedure.
Your wider policies will also have an impact on absences. For example, accommodating flexible working may reduce absences for those with caring responsibilities. Or how you make adjustments for people with known challenges that could impact their ability to work will also affect your absence levels.
Once you have the best policies in place for your business, you need to make sure your employees understand them. Remember, if your business is growing, you should make time to review your policies as situations inevitably change.
3. Spotting the presenteeism
If you’ve got high levels of absences, having presenteeism might seem like not a big problem but presenteeism can be a sign that someone is feeling overwhelmed with their workload and suffering from stress. 67% of people report that workload is their most common cause of stress and absence.
With technology and remote working, the barrier between work and home life is often very blurred. People are often able to work late evening from their sofas, or early morning from the breakfast table. Emails can be accessed around the clock on phones and often, if people are feeling stressed, they may also be feeling under more pressure to be responsive around the clock.
Making sure your people are not overworking will save you from potential absence issues further down the line. Check that people are taking proper breaks, using their holiday allowance and not overworking.
You may also want to encourage flexible working if it works for your business and your employee’s role. This can help take some pressure off those with difficult commutes or caring responsibilities.
Ultimately, all of your employees can benefit from valuing and protecting their home time.
4. Effective communication
If you want to manage absences at work, you need to have effective communication and a culture of accountability. As we mentioned earlier, your people need to feel safe enough to talk to either their manager or their employer. The sooner you find out about a problem, the sooner you can put support in place.
Someone may still need time away from work, but if you can plan for it, you can protect others in the team and adjust workloads accordingly. The more information you have upfront, the better it is for planning around any challenges.
Listening to what’s going on for your employees will also help them feel valued and appreciated. We also recommend that managers have regular conversations and 1-1s with their team so that any issues can be captured early on before it escalate.
5. Promote employee engagement
If your people feel as though their work has meaning and they enjoy it, there is less chance they will take time off sick. People also want to feel valued by their employer and that their work is contributing and appreciated.
70% of employers find that when they invest in wellbeing, it boosts employee engagement as a result.
Giving your employees the opportunities to develop their skills and deepen their learning will help promote employee engagement. It shows that you’re investing in them and their future with your company.
Likewise, celebrating the hard work and achievements of your people can help them feel valued and increase loyalty to the business. Recognition can be as simple as a shout-out in a team meeting, a bigger congratulations, or a more formal reward.
Celebrating life events as a team also promotes employee engagement and helps everyone work closer together. When your team is bonded, they feel more accountability towards each other and therefore managing absences becomes easier.
6. Train managers
Almost half of managers (43%) say that they don’t feel confident enough to deal with wellbeing issues. It’s essential that managers have the tools to deal with the main causes of absence, including stress, mental health and wellbeing. This is more important as we know mental health is a significant cause of both short and long-term absence.
Managers should be the first contact for any employee who feels overwhelmed by work or life events. They need to be aware of who is overworking, disengaged, or quietly quitting. A manager needs to step in before the causes of absence escalate into bigger issues. Plus, it is the manager who upholds the absence policy and the processes that support it.
By giving your manager effective training, you can actively reduce absences at work. Like our client who cut theirs by 50%.
The right training will help your managers implement the best strategies to reduce absences and support employee wellbeing.
Measuring the success of your absence management strategies
Managing absence is only effective if you can measure the results. Knowing what your absence levels are is essential for benchmarking and understanding which strategies are the most effective. It will also help demonstrate the return on investment for any wellbeing programmes, mental health and management training.
Absence rates are also linked to employee turnover. Not only might people be quietly quitting, but those picking up the slack may also be looking elsewhere for their next role. Understanding how a reduction in absence might impact your employee turnover can help you put other high-level plans in place.
You may also want to consider employee feedback on any programmes and policies. Measuring employee happiness and engagement can give you insights into how your people feel about your organisation and your efforts to create a more productive workplace.
Danton offers a comprehensive management training programme that gives managers the core skills and techniques they need to excel in the role. Find out more here.