There are several issues that arise due to employee absence from work. There’s the obvious problem that you are paying people for days in which they have provided no value to your company. But there are great spill over effects that really damage your company as well. Consider the following perils of employee absence from work:
- Fill in Fatigue – When someone is absent from work, someone else needs to cover for them. This means either someone has to add extra work to their plate or an outside hire is trained. This will either add fatigue to your existing employee or drain your resources trying to catch up a new outside hire.
- Administrative Costs – Your manager’s time is being spent juggling your employee’s time. Forcing your manager to deal with all of these absenteeism issues is more time your manager can’t spend optimising performance.
- Inferior Products / Services – Every employee in your company is someone you need to be able to rely on. Every member on your team is another leg of the table. You need everyone. When someone isn’t holding their weight, everyone suffers. If even just one player on the team is failing to perform, then the quality of the entire team is lowered. You rely on your employees for quality products and dependable service. When people you rely on start to going absent on you, you will feel it in your quality.
- Comfort Zones – If there is a trend going on around the office that it’s okay to miss a day every now and then, it will lead to a great decrease in worker productivity. People will work less and they will look for even more leeway in the future. If absenteeism isn’t addressed early, the problem only gets worse.
- Money Lost – Combine all of the costs above, and then tally up all the dollars wasted. The money you lose from paying employees, plus the money you lose covering for them, plus the administrative costs, and everything else makes for a costly problem. The money adds up. Billions of dollars are lost annually worldwide due to employee absence from work.
Maybe you think that absenteeism isn’t all that bad. Think about it this way. There isn’t a chance (not even 1%) that absenteeism can help your company. There’s nothing good that come out from it. There’s only a chance that excessive absence from work can hurt your company.
Don’t just sweep this under the rug. There are several options out there to help fight against absenteeism. For the sake of your company, look into absence management today.
How Can Time & Attendance Software Help?
Perhaps one of the most effective ways of combating employee absenteeism is with time and attendance software.
Think about how any problem is traditionally handled. Consider the following steps on handling issues in business. You’ve likely heard it all before:
- Identify The Problem – Everyone knows the first step in handling a business issue is determining whether such an issue exists or not. In the case of employee absenteeism, the question you need to ask yourself is if there are significant absences without cause or not. If there is, you would move on to step 2.
- Determine The Cause – Once you have decided that you do indeed have a problem, you need to find out what’s causing the problem. In the case of absences in the office, the cause could be an employee’s second job or their tendency to call in “sick” every Monday.
- Make A Plan – You know you have a problem, and you know what’s causing it. What’s next is to determine how to fix the problem. If your employee only has problems on days that conflict with their other job, then perhaps the best plan is to ask them to pick between the two jobs. If your employee just sporadically misses work often and you determine the cause is their lack of discipline, maybe it’s best for you two to go your separate ways.
- Execute – All the ground work is finished. All that’s left to do is speak with your employee. This is where you discipline and take action. This is the step that removes the problem.
Using Time & Attendance Software
Time and attendance software uses absence tracking and profiling to do this work for you.
The changes that need to be made are simple. It’s these simple changes that can have a great effect on your company. Dealing with absenteeism problems is more tedious than it is difficult.
It’s easy, but it’s a bother that isn’t worth your manager’s time.
For this reason, the entire process can be effectively automated. It can be automated to the point that it is far more effective than a simple clock in and clock out system.
The software will tell you if you have a problem with any employees. It will then tell you if they are missing every Monday, days after holidays or whatever particular trend exists. It will help you determine the best plan of action, and you can even enforce your rules directly through the software.