Employee absenteeism is a problem for every business and can cause heavy costs for employers. Getting 100% attendance from all of your employees is of course not possible. However, knowing how to deal with this problem and how to prevent employee absenteeism can reduce the impact of it on your business. Keep reading below to find some tips.
- Make sure there is a clear policy: Having a policy helps you clearly deal with this problem in an effective way. Also, this policy should be clearly communicated to all employees so you don’t come across with excuses such as “I didn’t know” or “Nobody told me this”. Posting this policy to the company intranet helps as well so that employees know where to look at when they need to.
- Track employee absences: Using an absence management system to track employee absences helps you to understand whether employees go over their allowed absence days and which employees exceed this time frame. Managers and human resources department should be well trained on how to keep track of employee absences and in which cases employees will be counted as absent.
- Offer flexible working options: Giving employees flexibility in their work schedules is another way of reducing absenteeism. In this way, employees can work from home or anywhere they want with an internet connection. If remote working cannot be an option for your office, then you can make the office hours flexible such as employees can come to work anytime between 8am and 10am and work for 8 hours. In this way, employees can take ownership on the control of their time.
- Offer enough paid time-off: Employees need to spend time outside of work as well with their families or loved ones. Therefore, it is important to give them that work/life balance so they can stay healthy and productive. Moreover, the most common days for being absent are usually Fridays and Mondays. Therefore, if employees have enough vacation days, instead of not showing up out of the blue, they can inform their coworkers in advance by taking that day off. In this way, a coworker can take on his/her responsibilities while s/he is in vacation and so work doesn’t stop.
