An Easy Guide to Staff Absence Management

As we all know discipline and management of any system is very important in an organisation to grow and achieve success. Developing a guide for absence management of employees is one of the important processes to be followed in any organisation. There are many aspects which can be considered. How elaborated it should be. How it should be related to companies' growth, how it should be targeted to. Here are some far reaching absence management guide to solve most of your queries regarding employee absence management system.

What is Absence Management

Absence management is basically a policy or procedure to track the absence and present record of employees in an organisation. It’s very important to have effective guideline and programme to this in order to run organisation in smooth and progressive way.

Leave Management

Management of leave of an employee is very important as it affects the work environment, workload of other employees and resource allocation. There should be a system where employees can request for vacation, approval and rejection of leave, parameter should be there as per the availability of other colleague to take the charge. This would result in a balanced annual leave within the company.

Today many of the SME (Small and medium enterprises) and start-ups don’t have these leave management systems which would positively impact their productivity and performance.

Another aspect of leave management is to maintain the Mental Health of employee by ensuring them to use their paid leave or rewarded leave by the organisation, rather than accumulating it.

Absence (Absenteeism) Management

Absenteeism means being absent from the workplace without any valid reason. This is the common issues which most of the organisation whether it’s big or small usually face, which somehow restrict the growth of the company.

Presence (Presenteeism) Management

Presenteeism means “the presence and commitment of employee to work without any leave”. This part is mostly overlooked by the organisation which can affect company more than absenteeism. Presenteeism is not just turning out for work, it’s more than that. It affects mental health, physical health, the work environment at the office and even family harmony. So, there should be guidelines to ensure employees take the annual leaves allocated to them by contract.

Guide for Absence Management

Some of the important guidelines a company can implement in order to manage employee absence:

• There should be proper use absence management system.
• Leave type should be mentioned as per the acceptance and rejection guidelines.
• Description should be there how and when leave should be requested. Like, starting of the year, or one week before the first day of the leave.
• Disciplinary action and Reward should be there as per the attendance of the employee.
• Awareness programme should be organised so that they should be engaged in activity.
• It’s very important to make the organisation environment fun loving so day to day entertainment activity should be there to reduce the boredom at workplace.
• Flexible work timing of work should be there for the employee so that they can fulfil their personal commitment which is the main reason of absence.
• Work from home system should be encouraged so that sick leave can be avoided which will help company to use their human resource effectively.
• Incentives and rewards for good attendance will improve this absent management.
• Define the tool that you will be using to track the employees’ absence.
• Describe the consequences if an employee fails to follow the policy.
• Return to work interview can be also used for figuring out this persisting problem and ways to help employees handle the problems that prevent them from being present at work and staying engaged.
• Communicate with your team to know their problem and issues.
• Train your managers. As without formal training they may fail to spot pattern in absence or deal with problems ineffectively. This can damage relationships within their team and amplify problems.

Summary

Monitoring Absence and Sickness pattern in an organisation can help you to understand more about your business and work. This will also help to understand the people who works for you. And this understanding can help you to strengthen your business for long term growth and success.