Taking a one-off sickie doesn’t seem too much of a crime, but it is a major headache for UK industry.
Research by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) suggests that 172 million working days are lost each year across Britain through sickness absence, costing businesses about 13 billion pounds.
The problem isn’t exclusive to UK. Absenteeism costs the global economy an absolute fortune each year.
“Unscheduled absence is a critical issue for businesses,” says Simon Macpherson, Senior Director Business Development and Operations of Kronos EMEA, a workforce management specialist. “Observing, evaluating, and attempting to improve absenteeism can be extremely beneficial – we’ve seen it with our customers,” he adds. “But you need to also have a proper understanding of what causes absenteeism and how to reduce it.”
Indeed, when you dig beneath the surface of any company you discover whole host of cultural, organizational and management issues behind high absenteeism rates.
“People stay away from work for many reasons,” says Macpherson. “Sometimes it’s for personal reasons, sometimes it’s because they’re feeling stressed, sometimes it is because they’re having difficulty dealing with their boss, and sometimes it is because their shift patterns have been badly organized.
“There are many issues like that which can play a role.”
He explained that often, and rather alarmingly, many businesses don’t have a system to report, capture or even measure absenteeism. The old adage “you can’t manage want you do not measure” comes to mind.
It is also common to find higher absenteeism rates in businesses that employ over 500 people, where it is “much more difficult” to keep track of such things.
“Many businesses don’t measure absenteeism at all, which is a concern. But in those that do there is a clear trend that the larger the organization is the bigger the problem is.
“And it is a costly thing to ignore. When people are away from work customer service suffers and, in our experience, morale plummets among those who are angry with their colleague taking unscheduled leave and have to cope with the additional workload.
“Many other problems arise. In a manufacturing environment, productivity is naturally the first causality.”
The good news is that it’s actually quite simple to manage absenteeism – and the benefits are both immediate and long-term. Having a clear picture of who’s off and why they’re off can help managers or team leaders to plan effectively.
“If you have the right information, you can look at what work is affected, how critical it really is, etc.,” says Macpherson. “But you also need good policy, because people can be genuinely ill. And you need to put things in place to understand why an employee is absent and offer support.
“Something like a return to work interview is great and will help reassure employees that the employer is interested in their welfare.
“And the added benefit is that it opens the door to flexible working,” he adds. “Flexible scheduling is crucial to reducing absence and we are seeing it introduced more and more into manufacturing. The industry is quickly adopting JIT labor, offering staff the opportunity to work on flexi-time and have much more flexibility in the hours they work.”
Successful manufacturing workforce management depends on controlling labor costs and improving productivity. It is this undeniable fact which makes what Mr. Macpherson has to say all the more poignant.
“You can use our solutions to not only time keep, but also track labor in real-time and schedule and redeploy workers to improve workforce utilization in peak periods,” says Macpherson.
Many Kronos customers have already achieved great results in their bids to reduce absenteeism by closely monitoring absence levels and patterns of behavior and nipping the problem in the bud by conducting timely return-to-work interviews. Take Aunt Bessie’s, a frozen food manufacturer in the UK, for example. With some 500 employees, 150 agency staff, two factories and around 34 million Yorkshire puddings to produce every week, the company continuously reviews its business practices to ensure that operations are efficient and cost effective.
In 2004 Aunt Bessie’s replaced its manual clocking system with Kronos Workforce Central and experienced all the normal advantages of a good T&A system: accurate payroll, a significant decrease in clock card analysis and fewer payroll errors and complaints.
Using Kronos also helped the firm significantly improve the way in which absence could be monitored and measured and resulted in a 27 percent decrease in absence levels on the main site.
“That is one of our many successes,” says Macpherson. “Controlling absence should be a business priority in every organization.”
Research by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) suggests that 172 million working days are lost each year across Britain through sickness absence, costing businesses about 13 billion pounds.
The problem isn’t exclusive to UK. Absenteeism costs the global economy an absolute fortune each year.
“Unscheduled absence is a critical issue for businesses,” says Simon Macpherson, Senior Director Business Development and Operations of Kronos EMEA, a workforce management specialist. “Observing, evaluating, and attempting to improve absenteeism can be extremely beneficial – we’ve seen it with our customers,” he adds. “But you need to also have a proper understanding of what causes absenteeism and how to reduce it.”
Indeed, when you dig beneath the surface of any company you discover whole host of cultural, organizational and management issues behind high absenteeism rates.
“People stay away from work for many reasons,” says Macpherson. “Sometimes it’s for personal reasons, sometimes it’s because they’re feeling stressed, sometimes it is because they’re having difficulty dealing with their boss, and sometimes it is because their shift patterns have been badly organized.
“There are many issues like that which can play a role.”
He explained that often, and rather alarmingly, many businesses don’t have a system to report, capture or even measure absenteeism. The old adage “you can’t manage want you do not measure” comes to mind.
It is also common to find higher absenteeism rates in businesses that employ over 500 people, where it is “much more difficult” to keep track of such things.
“Many businesses don’t measure absenteeism at all, which is a concern. But in those that do there is a clear trend that the larger the organization is the bigger the problem is.
“And it is a costly thing to ignore. When people are away from work customer service suffers and, in our experience, morale plummets among those who are angry with their colleague taking unscheduled leave and have to cope with the additional workload.
“Many other problems arise. In a manufacturing environment, productivity is naturally the first causality.”
The good news is that it’s actually quite simple to manage absenteeism – and the benefits are both immediate and long-term. Having a clear picture of who’s off and why they’re off can help managers or team leaders to plan effectively.
“If you have the right information, you can look at what work is affected, how critical it really is, etc.,” says Macpherson. “But you also need good policy, because people can be genuinely ill. And you need to put things in place to understand why an employee is absent and offer support.
“Something like a return to work interview is great and will help reassure employees that the employer is interested in their welfare.
“And the added benefit is that it opens the door to flexible working,” he adds. “Flexible scheduling is crucial to reducing absence and we are seeing it introduced more and more into manufacturing. The industry is quickly adopting JIT labor, offering staff the opportunity to work on flexi-time and have much more flexibility in the hours they work.”
Successful manufacturing workforce management depends on controlling labor costs and improving productivity. It is this undeniable fact which makes what Mr. Macpherson has to say all the more poignant.
“You can use our solutions to not only time keep, but also track labor in real-time and schedule and redeploy workers to improve workforce utilization in peak periods,” says Macpherson.
Many Kronos customers have already achieved great results in their bids to reduce absenteeism by closely monitoring absence levels and patterns of behavior and nipping the problem in the bud by conducting timely return-to-work interviews. Take Aunt Bessie’s, a frozen food manufacturer in the UK, for example. With some 500 employees, 150 agency staff, two factories and around 34 million Yorkshire puddings to produce every week, the company continuously reviews its business practices to ensure that operations are efficient and cost effective.
In 2004 Aunt Bessie’s replaced its manual clocking system with Kronos Workforce Central and experienced all the normal advantages of a good T&A system: accurate payroll, a significant decrease in clock card analysis and fewer payroll errors and complaints.
Using Kronos also helped the firm significantly improve the way in which absence could be monitored and measured and resulted in a 27 percent decrease in absence levels on the main site.
“That is one of our many successes,” says Macpherson. “Controlling absence should be a business priority in every organization.”
