Missing someone?

Productivity loss due to absenteeism is a serious and growing challenge in the workplace. CareerBuilder’s 2009 survey on absenteeism, covering 4700 workers and 3100 employers, shows nearly 32% of US workers have played hooky from the office this year, calling in sick when they were well at least once. 28% of employers blame the recession, noting the increase in stress and risk of burnout

More generally, there are three typical reasons employees will take unwarranted medical leave. The most common reason is to meet obligations outside work, such as caring for children or elderly relatives, although staff have also been known to clandestinely attend job interviews in this way.

Employees can also use sick leave as a way of avoiding something negative at work. It could be that they dislike their boss, they are suffering from stress or burnout, or that they simply don’t have the resources they need to do the job.

Finally, some employees feel that the boss “owes” them a day off – they take the so-called “sickie” to even the balance.

It is easy to point fingers at employees who take such unauthorised time off but the fact is there is little employers can do in retribution. How do you prove employees were not sick; and even then; so what? The answer lies in more carrots, and less sticks.

HR needs to create workplaces that employees instinctively want to be a part of; not jobs they try to avoid at all costs. Curing the “sickie” epidemic will therefore require more than just changing the attitudes and values of employees, it will also require industries to pay more attention to the workplace environments they create.

HR’s solutions

What constitutes the “best” absence management policy will, of course, change from organisation to organisation. The value of an absence management policy is increased productivity, and therefore, profit for the company. However, the policy must reflect human values of fairness and respect, and management’s duty of care for employees.

Business software company SAP Asia Pacific says its policy is working well; and employee absenteeism is not a major problem in any of its offices. Geraldine McBride, President, SAP Asia Pacific, says that by giving employees more choices in when and how they work, they are more enthusiastic about their jobs over the long term.

“For example, we have no time cards at SAP to monitor when employees arrive and leave. Employees are also given the flexibility to work from home if the need arises. We give our employees a great deal of personal responsibility and regard trust – across the complete organisation – as extremely important,” she says.

Other successful approaches to minimising absenteeism include emphasising care, positive thinking, and shared responsibility, McBride adds. She advises that any policy should be concerned principally with managing the effects of absence from genuine sickness, while acknowledging that some absences by a distinct minority of employees may be suspect or exaggerated.

Another HR director told HRM that the most effective programmes communicate the objectives of the policy and how it will be applied. Discussions with staff should be about presence, rather than absence, and the avenues your organisation makes available to help them get well, she said.

Depending on the nature of the absence, benefits and services a company offers might include counseling, job retraining, job sharing and, where appropriate, extended sick leave.

The price tag

In the US, the annual cost to employers unscheduled worker absences was almost $100 billion last year. Absenteeism costs Australian businesses over A$2 billion annually. While those macro-economic figures can astound, it is the costs-per-day of sick leave that really hit home. In the UK, this amounts to an average £478 per employee, per day. An unscheduled absence in the US costs that employer an average of $602.

Stress pains

New Australian research has found that stress in Australian workplaces costs the economy some A$14.81 billion a year. The study, commissioned by private health insurer Medibank Private, looked at direct cost of workplace stress to Australian employers, as well as the indirect costs that occur when the effects of stress flow through the economy, causing changes to capital investment and other impacts to upstream and downstream industries.

Craig Bosworth, Industry Affairs Manager, Medibank Private, says the findings demonstrate how negative stress at work can significantly impact productivity and impose a heavy economic burden on businesses and the economy.

“The research has found 3.2 days per worker are lost each year through workplace stress. Even for a small business with only 10 employees, this adds up to more than a month in lost productivity,” Bosworth said.

It is a similar story in the US. The CareerBuilder survey revealed that 12% of those playing hooky from work admitted to calling in sick because of something work-related, such as to miss a meeting, give themselves some more time on a project, or to avoid the wrath of a boss, colleague or client.

Others admitted missing work because they needed to go to a doctor’s appointment (31%), needed to relax (28%), catch up on sleep (1%), run personal errands (13%), complete housework (10%) or spend time with family and friends (10%). An additional 32% “just didn’t feel like” going to work that day.