Employee absenteeism is a state of employees frequently missing from work for various justifiable or unjustifiable reasons. This said, everyone has a right to sick leave or time off to take care of a family member or deal with personal affairs. However, if employees tend to miss showing up for work without any “obvious” reason it can be a red flag you mustn’t ignore unless you want your productivity to plunge and your business to suffer.
Numerous invisible enemies can lead to employee absenteeism harming their health and work performance, like burnout, stress, anxiety, or depression.
These are all burning issues that need to be addressed on the spot to preserve employees’ mental health and get them back on track with their work. Unfortunately, all these conditions are closely related to irrational employers’ demands that can’t be met. When employees fail to meet unrealistic deadlines and reach set goals, they may overwork themselves, neglecting their essential needs.
On the other hand, they may get easily frustrated, feeling inadequate and unproductive. This’ll lead to a lack of motivation and complete disengagement in the long run.
If you want to avoid this worst-case scenario and address the causes of absenteeism before it turns into an unsolvable issue that ruins your team productivity, causing unpredicted expenses, keep reading. This article will offer you some tips to help you solve employee absenteeism effectively.
Create and Implement an Attendance Policy
The first step towards solving this problem is to create and implement a clear well-devised Attendance Policy that addresses the issues of scheduled or unscheduled leaves and tardiness. Here you need to be clear about the actions that you intend to take if employees are frequently late or miss appearing for work. Also, try to explain clearly each of the absence types, focusing on additional support for those who are experiencing burnout.
Once your employees have read, understood, and agreed with this policy, you can start implementing it. Devise a detailed plan regarding the ways you want to tackle different scenarios and make sure you apply the same criteria to all employees, starting from entry-level employees to senior-level management.
Start Using Attendance Tracking Software
Thanks to advanced employee monitoring and time tracking software, like Workpuls, keeping track of workers’ attendance doesn’t have to be a painstaking or time-consuming task.
Namely, these digital tools will give you a clear picture of every employees’ attendance, pointing out the first signs of absenteeism. You can use this data to identify possible patterns your employees have when it comes to missing from work, making it easier to address these issues and find effective solutions.
Identify the Causes of Absenteeism
Tracking employees’ attendance is just a first step towards solving potential issues. If you want to gain a deeper understanding of this problem you need to find out what causes employees to be late or absent from work. For example, if the track records show that some employees tend to be late on specific days, there can be a solid, justifiable reason for such behavior.
They could have trouble finding a babysitter, so you may help them by allowing them to work from home on these specific days. This is how you’ll meet employees’ needs, solving the attendance issue along the way.
Address These Issues on the Spot
Unfortunately, some reasons for skipping work are hard to identify on the spot. Namely, severe issues like anxiety, depression, or burnout are causes of absenteeism that can’t be noticed easily. So you need to observe employees’ behavior and overall performance to be able to tackle these issues.
The best you can do is to show your employees battling some of these issues that you understand what they are going through and offer the support they need to overcome these conditions that affect their health and productivity.
For example, when you see that your employees are overworking, heading for burnout, you can redistribute some portions of their workload, delegating it to those who have free time on their hands. In this way, you’ll make them feel less stressed and more motivated to show up for work.
This said you should go for disciplinary measures only when you are sure that you’ve exhausted all other possible solutions and that the causes for absenteeism are clearly unjustifiable.
