Reduce absenteeism in 9 steps

15 of June, 2022

Employee absenteeism can have very negative consequences on your business’s profitability. Indeed, the costs of employee absenteeism are often significant. A company should then look at ways to reduce absenteeism rate in order to optimize its staff’s productivity. In this article we provide you with 9 solutions to better manage employee absenteeism.

How to reduce absenteeism?

You won’t be able to completely solve the problem of absenteeism in the workplace. Employees will have unscheduled absences from time to time for various reasons.

But there still are several ways you can improve employee attendance. Most of them involve working on creating a healthier working environment as well as stating clear attendance rules. Here are the best strategies you can employ to reduce employee absenteeism:

1. Create a clear attendance policy

Your workers should know exactly what is expected of them in terms of attendance. Your policy should therefore state how employees are to report absences, how your company will follow up on unsanctioned absences, as well as what the consequences are for excessive absenteeism. Moreover, in order for your policy to be taken seriously, you must enforce it consistently.

2. Reward good attendance

Implementing a reward scheme for employees with good attendance records is a great way to give them an additional incentive to attend work. But be careful with this one and remember that there can be perfectly legitimate reasons for being absent, such as illnesses. Therefore, the reward system shouldn’t penalize the employees who have excused absences.

3. Address unsanctioned absences immediately

You should deal with absenteeism according to your attendance policy and be consistent when handing out consequences. However, addressing unscheduled absences isn’t only about dishing out sanctions. You should also be understanding and provide support to your employees. Try to find out the reason behind their absences, they might have a problem that you can help them with.

In that regard, a good practice to introduce is the return-to-work interview. This helps the worker ease back into their role, shows that the company cares about its staff and reduces the risk of repeated absenteeism.

4. Improve employee well-being

Absenteeism is often linked to a stressful or unhealthy work environment. You can then look at ways to reduce stress in the workplace, for instance by implementing a wellness program or taking the appropriate measures to fight harassment.

Make looking after your employees’ health one of your top priorities. Physical and mental health are essential to an engaged and productive workforce.

5. Offer flexible work options

Offering flexible working hours is an excellent idea to increase your employees’ well-being and their attachment to the organization. You should therefore consider introducing flexible schedules and remote work. Some companies even offer unlimited vacation days!

Sesame’s time tracking panel makes it really easy for employees with a flexible schedule to record their attendance and track how many work hours they have left.

6. Encourage employee engagement

A good way to make your staff more committed and actually want to come to work is to increase their engagement. This means maintaining an efficient internal communication system where employees can follow what is going on in the company, suggest improvements, report problems, etc.

It also includes investing in employee training and development programs. That way, workers can improve their skills and participate more and more in the organization’s activities.

7. Foster a teamwork culture

Following up on the previous idea, employees are more engaged when they feel that they are part of a team. A sense of belonging increases a worker’s motivation to go to work and their loyalty towards the company. This will also make them think twice before taking an unplanned day off and making things more difficult for their team.

8. Provide feedback

Let your employees know what they can improve, but also what they are doing right. Indeed, providing guidance and encouragement makes the employees feel noticed. It will also push them to give their best and want to improve their performance, making them less likely to miss work.

9. Keep track of employee absences

Finally, use absence management tools to track employee work time and absences. They allow you to get useful data and measure employee absenteeism. With time, you will be able to check if you were successful in reducing employee absenteeism and make appropriate changes to your policy.

We hope this article has been useful to you. Do you want more information about employee management? Then stay in the blog section of Sesame HR.