ONE of the most serious issues affecting businesses today is staff absenteeism. It does not matter in which sector you operate, allowed to get out of control, consistent employee absence can have a ruinous effect on a company’s productivity.

The Confederation for British Industry (CBI) estimates that absenteeism costs the UK economy between £13billion and £16billion a year. In the public sector alone, more than 60 million days a year are lost – at a cost to the taxpayer of £3.5million.

Slowly but surely, many of Britain’s businesses have decided enough is enough. Until relatively recently, monitoring staff attendance would have been hit and miss and would have involved the bane of most bosses’ lives – more paperwork!

However, as with many aspects of life, technology has come to the rescue.

Only last month, the media reported how some companies had become so frustrated that they have resorted to introducing lie detector tests to test whether people calling in sick for work are telling the truth or not.

Rather than getting a friendly secretary on the end of the phone when you call from under the duvet after a heavy night, employees are finding their voices subjected to a voice analysis system.

A far more effective solution, and one now embraced by thousands of businesses in the UK, involves computer software geared towards tracking absenteeism in the workplace.

Obviously, it is important to make clear that a lot of workplace absence is genuine – possibly to do with serious illness, the loss of a relative or something equally terrible.

But the CBI and many other business organisations have shown time and again that a certain percentage of absenteeism is nothing short of skiving.

Here at Employment Law Advisory Services, we conducted our own extensive research into the problem and coined the phrase “Friday Feeling” which received media coverage around the world.

We revealed how huge numbers of employees were regularly not returning to work after lunch on Friday and coming up with an array of excuses to justify their absence.

These unlikely excuses included such gems as “my business lunch lasted longer than expected”, “I’ve got an important meeting on the way home” and “the car’s playing up and I need to get it fixed for next week”.

While they may sound amusing, the reality for bosses the length and breadth of Britain is somewhat different. We estimated that the cost to industry of the “Friday Feeling” phenomenon was in the region of £50million a year.

We have advised many companies on installing sophisticated yet simple software which has helped them to successfully combat absenteeism in the workplace.

The success of one of our clients, a Greater Manchester company, was featured on the Tonight programme with Sir Trevor McDonald.

Within weeks of introducing absenteeism software, the manufacturing company had slashed absenteeism by more than 50 per cent, increased productivity and saved the company more than £15,000 in six months.

Such software allows bosses and HR managers to keep track of employee attendance, spot emerging trends quickly and arm you with the information you require to take action.

The software can also be useful in a number of other ways such as alerting you as to when staff contracts are due for renewal, providing a full register of employee details and offering guidance on carrying out discipline and grievance procedures.

The introduction of this kind of technology in many companies has unquestionably allowed bosses to fight back. Until now, they would have been so caught up in the day to day running of their businesses that the prospect of monitoring staff attendance by pen and paper would have been too much to contemplate.

But specialist software has allowed people to track attendance – and non attendance – at the touch of a button.

Big events in the calendar, particularly sporting ones, are also notorious for wreaking havoc in the workplace.

While ardent football fans will not agree, the absence of any of the Home Nations from this summer’s European Football Championships is good news for most bosses.

Rather than a serious staff absenteeism issue, the most they will have to put up with is a few long faces as fans rue the fact that none of our teams made it through to compete in Switzerland with the cream of Europe.

During the last World Cup in 2006 in Germany, experts suggested that the cost to British business was in the region of £100million a day.

The level of absenteeism in the workplace was said to rise by at least 20 per cent every time England competed in a match.

Apparently, it was a similar story when England’s cricketers triumphed in the Ashes Series against Australia in the summer of 2005.

Even if matches take place in the evening, the impact on businesses dependent upon night or shift workers can be dramatic.

While state of the art software can play a vital role in helping bosses get a grip on workplace absence, it must be accompanied by a range of other measures.

On a simple level, if you are going to crack down on serial slackers, you should also look to motivate good staff by putting in place a system to reward those with excellent attendance records.

Considering reasons why an employee may be regularly absent is also important. Is someone having a particularly hard time with a client or customer? Maybe the opportunity to chat through any issues with a line manager or employer – and thereby finding a solution – could be all that is required to raise the confidence of the employee again.

Reviewing your company’s approach to absenteeism to ensure that it is robust from a legal and HR perspective is also important.

Do staff contracts and handbooks make clear what steps employees are obliged to take should they need to be absent or are forced to be absent through genuine reasons, usually health related.

If not, then this is an area that needs urgent attention and, once you have the right policies in place, they need to be actively promoted to all employees.

Ensuring line managers are fully up to speed with such policies and that they know how to act when an issue occurs is also extremely important.

This requires a level of training to ensure that absenteeism is dealt with sensitively and within the requirements of the law. Legislation that needs to be adhered to includes the Disability Discrimination Act, the Access to Medical Records Act and Data Protection Act.

When someone has been absent for genuine reasons, it is important that they are integrated quickly and effectively back into the workplace as soon as they return.

Rather than flagging up the fact that they have a mountain of paperwork and emails to catch up with, companies should do their best to ease the employee back into the swing of things by arranging, where possible to share out some of the catch up process with other colleagues.

We know from our experience working with businesses of all shapes and sizes how putting in place the right procedures, allied to the effective use of simple yet sophisticated software, can turn around the fortunes of companies across all sectors. Whereas a few years ago, such software would have cost a small fortune, today it is affordable to virtually every company, whether they have a handful of employees or thousands.

Instead of reading the doom and gloom figures issued by the likes of the CBI and others and saying “That’s me”, companies have the tools to fight back and protect their businesses.

Other recent research claimed that a staggering 93 per cent of employees rather unimaginatively cited colds and flu as the reason for being away from work, when in reality more than half of all workplace absence has absolutely nothing to do with health.

Now companies have the ability to spot whether someone is regularly ringing in on a Friday or Monday morning claiming to have fallen victim to the latest flu virus. It quickly becomes clear who the genuine absentees are and which ones are swinging the lead.

There is no longer any excuse for businesses, industry leaders and, indeed, the Government to accept Britain’s crippling “culture of absenteeism”.

And employees need to be in no doubt that “pulling a sickie” far from being a joke has the potential to cost them their job and their livelihood.

FACTFILE

·          According to the CBI, the cost to the British economy of staff absence is more than £13billion a year;

·          Public Sector employees are the worst offenders with 60 million days a year lost at a cost of £3.5billion;

·          Around 160 million days a year are lost through absence across the UK economy;

·          While over 90 per cent of employees cite colds and the flu as their reason for missing work, the reality is at least half of all workplace absence has nothing to do with health;

·          Major sporting events, such as the football World Cup, can cause a rise in absenteeism  more than 20 per cent;

 Research last year showed a growing phenomenon dubbed “Friday Feeling” in which employees regularly find reasons for not returning from lunch on the final day of the working week.

 This article was written by Peter Mooney, head of consultancy at Employment Law Advisory Services (ELAS), which specialises in all employment law and health and safety matters. The team can be contacted on 0161 785 2000.

Visit www.employment-law.uk.com for more information.

For HR Software to manage your absences, visit www.employersafe.co.uk