Innovative ways to manage absence
Absence management has always been a thorny issue for HR
professionals, who do all they can to alleviate the costs
and issues surrounding this emotive and complex area.
Traditionally this has consisted of policy work,
health-related expenditure such as private medical
insurance (PMI) and group income protection, and line
management training.
The problems with this approach are as follows:
The policies themselves may not be helpful to line
managers. Phrases like: "an unacceptable level of absence
will be investigated" could mean that different
interpretations will emerge from different line managers.
Most HR systems can provide good reporting of who is
absent, when and sometimes why, but often this information
is reliant on line manager input into the system and
ongoing reports and prompts from HR. How will the line
manager remember that this is the fifth occasion in the
last/rolling 12 months that the employee has been absent
and they now need to be seen?
What about outputs? What does the line manager do to record
what is agreed and said, and how do these vary across the
organisation?
The new breed of outsourced sickness absence management
services seems to be the answer to such challenges and can
provide a prescriptive, quality-oriented and best-practice
solution.
How can you manage unless you measure?
Having someone other than the line manager taking
notification calls is one of the key benefits of outsourced
absence services. There is an increase in accuracy of
measurement, and by adopting a set of defined and possibly
clinical categories, the employer can really begin to
target absence types and expenditure to prevent recurrences.
There are two very different approaches to taking
notification calls: those services who use nurses, and
listening services. While there are pros and cons for both
approaches, the use of nurses to take calls can be
restrictive: many services only operate from 9am to 5pm,
while the listening services tend to be 24/7, 365 days a
year. For the employee who is having a rough time at night,
calling in when they would like to and not having to wait
until the morning could mean that they have a better
night's sleep and return earlier. It can also help with
resource planning. The cost of such clinical resources
should also be borne in mind.
What should happen in a notification call?
The first area that the contact centre should be asking is
for core information: why is the employee absent, when will
they return, is there any on-going work and what the
call-back number is. The line manager can then make contact
if they need to discuss any aspect of the work. The second
area is to optimise the employee benefits that an employer
has purchased. The two most consistently used benefits on
Day 1 are the PMI/cash plan and the Employee Assistance
Programme (EAP). Whilst it is likely that the employer has
all employees covered under the EAP, it is rare that all
will be covered under the PMI and so the IT system used by
the contact centre should be able accurately to record who
is and is not a member of different schemes. Once this is
done, employees should then be provided with the EAP
helpline or PMI claims number so they can then see what
support is available to them.
How much are you losing due to absence?
Having an effective EAP in place is the starting point of a
real opportunity to manage each and every absence in a
professional and consistent manner. All that should have to
change is a different number to call for employees. Once
this is achieved, the employer can then accurately monitor
the cost of absence and presenting issues.
An effective absence management system could pinpoint the
truth about how much absence is costing your organisation.
In some cases your perceived absence rate may even
increase, thanks to accurate monitoring, and removing the
line manager from taking the calls - in which case a
timeous intervention would be imperative. The real question
is: how serious is your organisation about attendance
management? If you want to operate on an efficient,
consistent and best-practice basis, an efficient and
outsourced absence-management service may be the key to a
turnaround in staff absence levels.
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http://www.ceridian.co.uk
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