How much is employee absence costing your company?

A study of employee absenteeism from the Conference Board of Canada found it cost the Canadian economy $16.6 billion.  The amount did not include indirect costs such as replacing workers, administrative costs, or productivity losses due to lower morale.

How many days are your staff absent from work on average? How does your average measure up to the average work absence of Employees in Canada? If you are not tracking employee absence, you are not alone. Only 46% of employers track absenteeism.

Just tracking the absences can have an immediate impact on attendance rates. Knowing the reasons behind employee absence can help prevent it and help employers reduce costs. Having the data and understanding trends can help you start to prevent issues and help employees find the resources they may need to maintain a healthier lifestyle, so they don’t miss work.

Tracking Employee Absences

Keeping track of employee absences is the first step to reducing costs. Some employees are not aware that their absences are outside of the norm. Tracking employee absences is also helpful in identifying people who are trending towards disability leave, intervening at an earlier stage can help get them the help and support they need to prevent a long-term absence.

Options for tracking

Call offs for employee absence is often handled by a 3rd party, as some employees may feel pressured if they have to speak to a supervisor to report their absence.

There are some automated systems available to report employee absence, these work well for some companies. The cost of initial set up of these automated systems may be prohibitive, additionally employees who are feeling unwell may struggle with, choose 1 for this and 2 for that and 3 for the other method of reporting their absence.

A live answer employee absence reporting line is an option used by many companies. It is simple to use and requires little training for the callers. Employees calling in are greeted by a human book off agent, they report their name, area where they work (or any other identifying information you may require), the reason for their absence and when their expected date of return. They can also be given a confirmation number to correspond with the book off, if you choose.

This data is sent to your HR department via text or email, it is time and date stamped. The data can be sent in a variety of formats to suit your tracking method.

Keeping track of employee absences is the first step, with the data you collect you can effectively address absence issues and improve your bottom line.