Calculate how much absence is costing you?

Innovative ways to manage absence

Absence management has always been a thorny issue for HR professionals, who do all they can to alleviate the costs and issues surrounding this emotive and complex area. Traditionally this has consisted of policy work, health-related expenditure such as private medical insurance (PMI) and group income protection, and line management training.

The problems with this approach are as follows:

  • The policies themselves may not be helpful to line managers. Phrases like: “an unacceptable level of absence will be investigated” could mean that different interpretations will emerge from different line managers.
  • Most HR systems can provide good reporting of who is absent, when and sometimes why, but often this information is reliant on line manager input into the system and ongoing reports and prompts from HR. How will the line manager remember that this is the fifth occasion in the last/rolling 12 months that the employee has been absent and they now need to be seen?
  • What about outputs? What does the line manager do to record what is agreed and said, and how do these vary across the organisation?

The new breed of outsourced sickness absence management services seems to be the answer to such challenges and can provide a prescriptive, quality-oriented and best-practice solution.

How can you manage unless you measure?

Having someone other than the line manager taking notification calls is one of the key some notification call services use medical personnelbenefits of outsourced absence services. There is an increase in accuracy of measurement, and by adopting a set of defined and possibly clinical categories, the employer can really begin to target absence types and expenditure to prevent recurrences.

There are two very different approaches to taking notification calls: those services who use nurses, and listening services. While there are pros and cons for both approaches, the use of nurses to take calls can be restrictive: many services only operate from 9am to 5pm, while the listening services tend to be 24/7, 365 days a year. For the employee who is having a rough time at night, calling in when they would like to and not having to wait until the morning could mean that they have a better night’s sleep and return earlier. It can also help with resource planning. The cost of such clinical resources should also be borne in mind.

What should happen in a notification call?

The first area that the contact centre should be asking is for core information: why is the employee absent, when will they return, is there any on-going work and what the call-back number is. The line manager can then make contact if they need to discuss any aspect of the work. The second area is to optimise the employee benefits that an employer has purchased. The two most consistently used benefits on Day 1 are the PMI/cash plan and the Employee Assistance Programme (EAP). Whilst it is likely that the employer has all employees covered under the EAP, it is rare that all will be covered under the PMI and so the IT system used by the contact centre should be able accurately to record who is and is not a member of different schemes. Once this is done, employees should then be provided with the EAP helpline or PMI claims number so they can then see what support is available to them.

How much are you losing due to absence?

Having an effective EAP in place is the starting point of a real opportunity to manage each and every absence in a professional and consistent manner. All that should have to change is a different number to call for employees. Once this is achieved, the employer can then accurately monitor the cost of absence and presenting issues.

Find out how much absence is costing your business, with the popular new Absence Calculator.

An effective absence management system could pinpoint the truth about how much absence is costing your organisation.

In some cases your perceived absence rate may even increase, thanks to accurate monitoring, and removing the line manager from taking the calls - in which case a timeous intervention would be imperative. The real question is: how serious is your organisation about attendance management? If you want to operate on an efficient, consistent and best-practice basis, an efficient and outsourced absence-management service may be the key to a turnaround in staff absence levels.

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