Three tips to manage sickness absence

Sickness levels can have a very damaging effect on your business, and it is essential that they are managed correctly. Potentially it can be very costly in terms of loss of long-term and high revenue customers as a result of not meeting your commitments. It can also have a ‘knock on’ effect on the morale and motivation of the remaining members of your workforce in having the added pressure of taking on the additional workload of absent colleagues. By applying some fundamental principles you can get your absence levels under control and reduce the risk to your business performance.

Tip 1: Ensure that your organisation has a formal absence policy which is clearly communicated and understood by all employees and is reviewed and updated regularly to reflect the latest changes in employment legislation. Without having a clear absence policy in place, any absence is unlikely to be recorded accurately and consistently, making it difficult to identify long-term, persistent short-term or complicated absence cases.

Tip 2: Use industry standard tools, such as the Bradford Factors, to help you to determine whether the short-term absence of your employees is becoming a problem.

Tip 3: Ensure that Return to Work interviews are conducted after each absence. A key advantage of conducting return to work interviews on a regular and consistent basis is that they give managers an opportunity to identify the possible underlying cause(s) of frequent absences at an early stage.

Don’t forget that you have access to all of these resources in HR Pulse.

HR Pulse will provide you with:
• accurate absence records
• triggers using the Bradford Factors to give you an early indication as to where absence levels are potentially a problem
• an absence report so that you can monitor absence on an ongoing basis
• legally compliant and intuitive people management tools which will signpost for you how to manage your employee’s absence effectively
• legally compliant and robust documents which support the absence management process.
We are also looking for referral partners where you can earn a share of our monthly subscriptions of clients you introduce to HR Pulse for the duration that they are a paying client.