Absence Management: Meaning, Reasons, & Policy Pointers

Undivided commitment is the key to success. Therefore, corporates must have a dedicated and committed workforce to deliver their best output to achieve organizational success. In this case, many obstacles come into view to obstruct the pathway to success. These can be employee health, loss of productivity, competency, and also the topic of our discussion today, employee absenteeism.

Absenteeism is a huge challenge to a company's success quotient. In this regard, proper absence management must be in place to keep this discrepancy in check.

So, let's start with understanding the concept of absence management.

What is Absence Management?

It is the practice to control the absenteeism factor of a company. This is usually done through designing policies that suitably help the companies limit their absenteeism rate. In today's time, implementing a functional absence management system will help your business to flourish in this regard.

Here, many studies show that most employees don't take many leaves in a year in the case of employee absenteeism. This would imply that absenteeism is not a problem, but such is not the case.

While this is true to an extent, but this is not the case with all companies. It is why you must have absence management measures in place to control this issue, and here's why.

Reasons Why You Must Practice Absence Management

1. Monitor the Situation

In the absence of an employee, one must always monitor the situation, whether it is the number of workers absent per day or the approaching pattern. Clear observation of the case lets you figure out the reason behind constant absenteeism. It can be bad employee health, lack of job satisfaction, motivation, morale, etc.

Absence management will help you monitor this. Once you understand these reasons, it will be easy to form an action plan accordingly.

2. Understand the Reasons

It is crucial to understand the reasons for absence. You must only approve an application of absence for valid reasons or until to the point your rules allow them. However, you should make certain exceptions in this case too.

For example, if an employee is sick and has no more leave remaining in his/her quota, you should allow the break anyway. If you have one ill worker in your workplace, he/she may affect the others as well.

This way, instead of one sick worker, you now have a whole unhealthy workforce in absence due to bad health. In these cases, it is vital to make an exception.

Having good absence management in this regard will help you assess these situations and form proper rules beforehand.

3. Proper Reporting

Ensuring proper reporting of absence is a must which is again a plus point of appropriate absence management. If one worker is on leave, the team members and the persons concerned should know about the absence beforehand. It will help the rest of the team members manage the workload better.

In this way, there will always be a smooth flow in workload management.

4. Absence Records

You should always maintain a proper record of employee absence. This will help you keep a tab of the proceedings, which can help you ascertain your absence management performance. Here, proper absence management and also many absence management tools can help you maintain this record.

5. Follow Up

Just after putting a plan into action, you should also follow up on these points and draft your plan/policy accordingly. It will help you understand the plans which have worked or failed to work in the past. Knowing this will help you frame better policies for the future.

By implementing proper absence management, you can regularly do this check whenever required.

These were just a few of the reasons why you must have proper absence management in your office.

Now that we are clear on the need for absence management, let's also look at how you can achieve this.

Pointers For Drafting A Better Absence Management Policy

1. Transparent Policy

Your leave policy should always be transparent. In most cases, workers don't understand their leave privileges because of an overcomplicated leave policy.

This results in them either taking a lot of leaves or very little. By having a transparent policy, your workers will understand their privileges better and plan their day-offs accordingly.

2. Exceptions to Absence

Outside of the ordinary casual leave and earned leave, you should make some exceptions to absence as well. For example, type of absence like when someone is ill, has a hospital emergency, maternity leave, etc. It will help you monitor the situation well and build a compassionate image of yourself at the same time.

3. Awareness of leave policy

You should always make sure that your workers thoroughly understand the leave policy. Generally, one learns about the leave policy early on during the onboarding stages. But, it is also essential to invite questions as and when they arise during employment as well.

4. Proper reasons for absence and delegation of work

An absence management policy must also make provision for proper reasons for absence. As per the employee leaves, you must ask for the causes of absence from your workers. Here, it is also imperative that there is the appropriate delegation of their work during the leave.

In short, during an employee's absence, there must be other employees who would do the absent employee's work. It is required to maintain a proper workflow in the business.

5. An incentive to be present

Above all, your policy must focus on pulling employees into the workforce rather than reducing absenteeism. Here, you can design a better workplace environment, workplace culture, etc. That will make employees want to come to the office. Understanding this aspect will make a better and happier workplace with less absenteeism.

These were a few things you must keep in mind while drafting an absence management policy.

In combating absence management, there are also several digital software that can help your cause. Let's have a quick look at these as well.

How Absence Management Softwares Can Help With Employee Absenteeism

These are software that will help you streamline your employee absence management. You can approve or deny leaves through this software, get data, monitor the leaves, etc. In short, it will help you manage and track your worker's absence.

Some of the examples of such software are:

• Personio
• 247HRM
• ADP Vantage HCM
• Oracle Workforce Management
• E-days
• LeaveBoard
• Aplano

These were a few software that can help you manage your plight of absenteeism better in the workplace.

Conclusion

Absenteeism is a sight no employer would want to see at his office. It is so because the cost of absence is enormous for businesses. So, to avoid excessive absenteeism, one must take the initiative themselves.

A well-laid-out absence management measure will help you manage the employee absenteeism rate of your company.

We hope this piece helped you get started or plan better your absence management plan.

This article is written by Jyoti Prakash Barman. He is an in-house Content Marketer at Vantage Circle with interests in music and automobiles. For any related queries, contact editor@vantagecircle.com