Absenteeism is a significant indicator of the health and wellbeing of your workforce – high rates could indicate more serious organisational issues. Let's take a look at a few quick tips to help you monitor and improve the well-being of your employees
So ask yourself:
- Do you understand the current health of your workforce?
- Do you have a deep understanding of why employees are taking time off?
- Do you know what is causing illness and injury?
- Can you analyse data to discover patterns and trends to help inform management and planning, as well as ensure workplace health and safety?
Like most organisations, the answer is likely no.
Below are a few quick tips to monitor and improve the wellbeing of your employees:
- Recognise and value the importance of employee health and wellbeing organisation-wide
- Ensure the leadership and executive teams are committed to health and wellbeing by implementing a health and wellbeing policy and ensuring it is updated regularly with set goals and KPIs
- Monitor absence in your organisation and track the reasons for this absence
- Delve deeper if data shows there is an increasing number of people not turning up to work or complaining about stress
- Examine your data to find out how much absence in your organisation is costing and whether this could be offset by a new case management system
- Monitor complaints about the workplace culture or co-workers
- Regularly ‘check in’ with your employees and encourage open communication
- Offer incentives for employees to take better care of their health
- Implement a centralised absence management system to track absenteeism, HR cases, and escalations
- Offer additional support to employees who have a health or wellbeing issue through HR and/or case management
- Undertake regular trend analysis of your absenteeism
Transforming your business with centralised absence management
Centralising absenteeism by using absence management software or a case management system allows you to manage these issues, improve efficiency and the balance sheet, and importantly, improve the health and wellbeing of your workforce as a whole.
This is because as absenteeism is tracked, data can be analysed and patterns can then be identified from individual actions right through to broader organisational issues. This can lead to a triaging of employee issues for better and more personalised communications and support.
Who is getting it right? How this food processing company saved $850k in ‘sickie’ costs
At DHS, we pride ourselves in creating a holistic approach to absence management that consistently delivers exceptional results for our clients, helping reduce absenteeism by 40%. Here are some examples of leading organisations we’ve worked with that have reaped significant cost savings and boosted the bottom line thanks to a robust absence management program.
Managing a food processing company with more than 2,000 employees Australia-wide is complex in the best of times, let alone when ‘high-frequency sickies’ are on the rise. At DHS, we helped a leading food processing company transform its absence management strategy, saving three days per employee, per annum. That’s an extra 6,000 working days worth of staff productivity brought back into the company in one year.
The Challenge
- High frequency absenteeism – 1-2 day “sickies”
- Employees leaving voicemails/SMS and not discussing absence at time of notification
- Basic reporting prevented understanding the drivers of absence
The Solution
- Integrated approach to centralise reporting of absence
- Provide human resources with access to real-time absence reporting
- Implement consistent return-to-work interview processes
- Metrics developed with AbsenceTrack for RTW interview compliance, absence rates and causation factors
Results
- 27% absence reduction
- $850,000 annual savings
- 3 days saved per employee per annum
Discover how DHS can help empower your business with our range of innovative solutions.
Fill out the form below to find out how we can help you to take control of your absence management today.
