Employee Absenteeism

Employee absenteeism is the bane of having a workforce in your business. It’s inevitable (and understandable) that on some days, an employee will be absent from work when they’re supposed to be working because of a valid reason, such as illness or family emergencies.

As an employer, you have a strategy for ensuring absenteeism doesn’t hurt your firm’s productivity and efficiency. However, if absenteeism cases are increasing at an alarming rate, you have reason to worry. It’s time to find effective ways to combat employee absenteeism and ensure everyone is playing their role.

Continue reading this article for a handful of strategies you can use to reduce absenteeism in your workplace.

1. Establish Employee Attendance Policies

Let’s admit it. Left to their own devices, most people would not show up to work. So, if it’s not mandatory for your workers to come to work, rest assured most of them, if not all, will not report for duty.

It’s for this reason that organizations have employee attendance policies. These policies spell out the regular working hours and days, reporting time expectations, the procedures for getting absence permission (time-off), and the consequences of unreported absence among other guidelines.

If you’re a new business or you’ve never had employees, you might not have any employee attendance policies. Don’t make the mistake of hiring employees without first creating these policies.

If your business has had employees for some time, it’s possible that your attendance policies are outdated or no longer suitable. Give them another look and make adjustments where necessary.

However, keep in mind that employee attendance policies must be in compliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act and other relevant state and local laws. For instance, you cannot require your employees to work more than 40 hours a week. Anything beyond that must be charged as overtime at a rate that’s at least 1.5X the regular rate.

2. Track the Absenteeism Rate

As a small business with a few employees, it’s easy to keep tabs on the absenteeism rate. But if you have tens or hundreds of employees, it’s difficult to have a clear picture of who’s absent and who isn’t – unless you have a reliable way to track the absenteeism rate, like this time clock for small business.

The absenteeism rate is the number of unplanned absent days over the number of available work days in a certain period. You can track the absenteeism rate for an individual, a team, or the whole organization.

Knowing your organization’s absenteeism rate and comparing it with the national average (3.2 percent) will give you a clear picture of the task ahead. If the rate is above the national average, something is amiss. You need to understand why your employees are absconding from duty before implementing any practical prevention measures.

That’s because some strategies for reducing absenteeism in the workplace are more effective than others. When the absenteeism rate is high, you need more aggressive measures, such as introducing heavier fines.

3. Offer Paid Time Off and Other Incentives

You expect your employees to be at work when they’re supposed to. After all, you pay them for their services.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean some of your employees won’t be absent from work with your permission. The harsh truth is that sometimes an employee will just choose to be absent because they want a day of rest, are burned out, or simply because they think you won’t notice.

Of course, you can punish such employees with fines, but at the end of the day, your organization’s productivity will decline. A fine cannot replace lost work hours.

This is why you need to embrace the idea of incentivizing your employees to come to work. Yes, you pay them, but throwing in some paid time off won’t hurt. In fact, it will go a long way in increasing employee attendance.

Remember, PTO shouldn’t just be for vacations. If you can afford to pay your employees for other times when they’re from work, such as jury duty or parental leave, do it.

Besides PTO, you can run a rewards program for employee attendance. The employees who record the lowest absenteeism rate can get an award.

4. Ensure the Workplace Environment Is Safe and Healthy

An unsafe and/or unhealthy work environment is a leading cause of employee absenteeism.

Safety and health hazards can cause accidents and illnesses that will force your employees to take sick leave. A hazardous workplace will make workers ill for longer, a situation that will cause them to exhaust their sick leave. When that happens, they might have no choice but to be absent from work as they nurse their conditions.

As such, ensure your workplace is safe and healthy. Hire a workplace health and safety specialist to audit your company’s job site, identify hazards, and recommend ways to make the place safer for everyone.

5. Allow Flexible Work Scheduling/Remote Work

Did you know remote work can reduce unscheduled absenteeism from work by 63 percent?

When your employees don’t feel like coming to the office, it doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t want to work. In many cases, they want to work, just not from the office. This is where remote work comes in handy.

You don’t have to go fully remote as an organization to reap the absenteeism-reducing benefits of remote work. Offering employees the freedom to work from home for at least part of the time will yield the results you’re eyeing.

Don’t Let Employee Absenteeism Kill Your Business

Left unchecked, unscheduled employee absenteeism will hurt workplace productivity and increase your operating costs. If absenteeism is spiraling out of control in your organization, don’t wait to act. Implement the strategies in this article and you’ll see positive change.

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