Combating Employee Absenteeism

Can back belts help control lower back injuries in the workplace? Maybe, but only if workers are instructed in their proper use—and their limitations.

Employee absenteeism is a costly problem, draining $30 billion to $50 billion a year from North American businesses and causing untold inefficiencies, aggravation, and customer relation problems. While absences certainly occur for legitimate reasons such as serious illness, deaths, and family emergencies, they also occur for dubious reasons such as minor aches and pains, sleepless nights, sunny days, hangovers, and the desire to be someplace other than work.

The secret to preventing such unnecessary absences is motivating your employees to be at work, on time, and ready to go. Easier said than done? Here are some suggestions on how to achieve this goal.

Establish a Firm Absence Policy. Rather than treating absence as a benefit or right, establish an absence policy that sets 100-percent attendance as the standard, and reinforce this goal by promoting it in employee handbooks and newsletters. Your policy should outline the circumstances under which you’ll allow employees to be absent, as well as the check-in steps they should take to alert you to absences. Your policy should also make it clear that attendance will be taken into account during performance appraisals.

New hires, meanwhile, should be instructed that absence procedures must be followed in all cases and that failure to follow them is cause for disciplinary action.

Note Absences. Some employers require employees to complete claim forms upon their return from an absence, others informally discuss absences with employees, while large firms often refer absent employees to their in-house health service. The point is not to judge the validity of absences but to impress upon employees that you’re vitally interested in their attendance.

One reason to note absences is that, by maintaining a simple information system that categorizes absences by employee, work unit, and reason, you gain access to data that can help you spot absence trends.

Cost It Out. Periodically, publish a chart detailing the documented costs of all employee absences, perhaps giving employees with potentially serious attendance problems customized charts that show the economic consequences of their absences.

Encourage Participation. If your company has an absenteeism problem, ask employees for suggestions on how they’d solve it. Employees can also be called on to monitor the attendance of their peers and assist in rescheduling an absent employee’s work. This type of self-policing makes absent employees accountable to everyone. Alternatively, absent employees might be required to procure substitutes, switch shifts, or ask other employees to assume their duties.

Save the Work. If you have a busy workplace, absent employees might be encouraged to complete work that accumulated in their absence. This isn’t a viable option for every workplace, of course, but it can promote accountability when workloads are piling up.

Beware of ‘Doldrums’ Days. In many industries, absences skyrocket during “doldrums” periods, such as Mondays and Fridays, as well as just before or after vacation periods. While every absence deserves attention, doldrums absences merit special attention as they can point to absence abusers, employees with motivation problems, and more.

Consider Novel Leave Options. With a little creativity, you can change your current sick leave and absence practices to an approach that is more accommodating to employees and more effective for your company. Some ideas:

• If your firm provides sick leave, consider partially compensating employees for unused leave once a year in the form of a cash bonus or extra vacation time. Another incentive-based suggestion is to reward employees with sick leave allowances only after they have achieved a period of perfect attendance.
  
• If your employees face excessive demands on their time outside of work, consider flex-scheduling as this allows employees to schedule their absences around a flexible workweek. In a related vein, you could make provisions that allow employees to take time off in small chunks so they can easily keep appointments without having such appointments become full days of leave.
  
• A more unorthodox approach to sick leave would be to give employees a fixed amount of general leave each year and require sick days to be taken out of it, with the balance being available for vacation use.
  
• Another novel suggestion is to “bank” a fixed number of sick days for your company or its work units, rather than individual employees, and allow the days to be used only with the consent of the entire work team.
  

Forget the Physician Notes. Though the “doctor’s note” is still a popular requirement among employers, research suggests it’s ineffective in preventing absences. There’s one caveat, however: It’s often a good idea to require seriously ill employees to receive permission from their physicians to return to work.

Use Progressive Discipline. When you spot an absence abuser—someone who hasn’t followed attendance procedures or is absent without a valid excuse—give the employee a verbal reprimand. If the person continues to breach your policies, mete out more severe warnings and penalties, up to and including dismissal.

Hold Supervisors Accountable. If your firm is large enough to accommodate several layers of management, hold supervisors accountable for the attendance of employees in their departments. Research studies suggest that the quality of supervision frequently affects attendance levels.

Foster Wellness. Poor eating habits, lack of exercise, and stress are leading causes of short-term illness. To counter the negative effects of these and other wellness issues, offer health-related seminars and bulletin board information to keep healthy habits in front of your employees.

Promote Job Satisfaction. Study after study indicates that employee absences decline as job satisfaction increases, so it’s a good idea to promote job commitment, information sharing, and involvement among your employees. Once these qualities pervade the workplace, employees generally have less desire to be absent.

—Richard G. Ensman Jr., a writer based in Rochester, N.Y.