Employers may find it difficult to successfully manage employee sickness absence. It frequently necessitates a sympathetic attitude as well as a thorough understanding of the law. It can sometimes be challenging to achieve a balance between encouraging your employee and supervising him or her in order to reduce unacceptable absence levels.
When considering how to manage sickness at work, it is critical to first understand the various ways required for managing both short-term and long-term sickness absence. This article will go over:
How to reduce frequent short-term sick leave.
How to calculate time lost due to absence due to illness.
Creating a customized attendance management system for your company.
How to reduce frequent short-term sick leave.
When it comes to short-term illness absences, a typical assumption that arises during absence review meetings is that the employer does not believe the employee has been legitimately ill. In truth, the issue is not whether the employee was truly ill, but rather that their short-term, regular absence disrupts the firm.
Putting in place an attendance management procedure is a simple way to reduce the impact of absence on your business.
It provides a structure for managing absences and establishes clear boundaries for your personnel. A well-written and communicated procedure will allow you to handle an employee’s sickness absence fairly and consistently.
It is advised that you add trigger points in your attendance management method so that you may clearly express to your staff the degree of absence that is unsustainable for your organization.
Trigger points allow you to focus on objective facts; the employee’s absence has reached an intolerable level for your company. This allows you to avoid debates about whether the employee’s absence is legitimate or not.
How to calculate time lost due to illness or absence
If you don’t currently have trigger points to help you manage employee sickness absence, think about the best way to measure time lost for your company.
A clear approach to quantifying time lost due to sick leave can assist you in monitoring the impact of absence on your organization and managing employee sick leave.
There are four major techniques to calculate time lost due to illness or absence:
Rate of time lost;
The frequency frequency rate;
As well as the frequency rate of each individual;
Bradford’s factor.
Creating a customized attendance management procedure for your company
When developing your attendance management procedure, keep your organization’s culture and nature in mind. For example, if you hire professionals for knowledge-based tasks, you may not be bothered about two or three days of absence as long as deadlines are met.
However, if you have a production line and an employee is out for a few days due to illness, this can result in a more significant direct cost to the organization. For example, you may need to bring in agency workers or rearrange staff to replace the employee’s shift.
As a result, different organizations will have varying expectations of what constitutes an acceptable absence, which should be reflected in your attendance management strategy.
To properly manage short-term absences, you must first have systems in place that allow you to track attendance consistently. Your processes should also ensure that employees understand what constitutes inadequate attendance levels.
Even if you have a small company with a few employees, having an attendance management strategy in place with clear trigger points allows you to control absence proactively when an employee’s absence reaches an undesirable level.