The effects of absenteeism are wide-ranging and potentially damaging regarding productivity, finances, and team morale. Impact severity depends on the employee, their role, and company size.

Smaller organizations typically feel greater negative impact than larger companies with multiple staff members covering similar roles.

Loss of Productivity

One employee's absence impacts entire team productivity. Team members must cover absent employees' work while catching up on their own tasks. Meetings require rescheduling, timelines need adjustment, and managers lose time overseeing absence tracking.

Poor Quality Work

Employees covering absent colleagues often experience workplace stress affecting their own work quality. Overwhelmed employees with unexpected additional responsibilities may produce poor results, potentially losing clients or customers.

Financial Losses and Operational Costs

Average employee absence costs £522 per year per employee, with absenteeism estimated to cost the UK economy £21 billion in 2020. These operational costs include replacement worker expenses, administrative costs, and potential overtime compensation.

Negative Impact on Team Morale

Frequent absences from individual employees can create workplace tension. Colleagues covering additional workload may resent absent employees or feel exploited, while management becomes stressed over frequent absenteeism.

Demotivated Workforce

Depending on absence reasons, employee stress likely increases from causes, missed work, and lost income. Individual employee stress easily transfers to others, causing motivation and morale breakdowns across teams, creating a less engaged workforce.

Strategies to Reduce Absenteeism Rates

While many absenteeism causes cannot be controlled, several actions can decrease company absenteeism rate and improve overall employee experience:

1. Increase Workplace Flexibility

Approximately half of UK lone-parent families work full-time, with many struggling to maintain healthy work-life balance. Employees regularly missing work due to family responsibilities benefit greatly from flexible work arrangements including remote work options, flexible hours, or family-adjusted schedules. Read more about flexible working.

2. Maintain High Morale and Motivation

While improved organizational culture doesn't happen overnight, incorporating wellness programs, career development opportunities, workplace culture events, and employee well-being initiatives have led to positive outcomes for nine out of ten organizations.

These outcomes include better employee morale, increased employee satisfaction, healthier work environment, and reduced excessive absenteeism.

3. Recognize and Reward Attendance

Employees feeling unrecognized for good work are twice as likely to quit. Although absent employees' negative effects are more obvious than engaged employees' positive impacts, recognizing and rewarding excellent attendance records (aside from genuine approved absences) through recognition programs can incentivize others to improve their performance.

4. Lead by Example

When company leaders frequently leave office last-minute without legitimate reasons, it creates unspoken permission for employees to behave similarly. Hold every employee accountable for consistent attendance and ensure each absence is tracked, managed, and addressed consistently.

5. Train Line Managers

Ensure managers and supervisors are prepared to handle chronic absenteeism. Training should include processes and systems for absence tracking and managing employee absences, plus relational training for navigating difficult conversations productively.

6. Support Struggling Employees

When employees have frequent absences or excessive absences, schedule regular check-ins to discuss underlying issues and develop management strategies. Creating a supportive work environment is especially important when addressing sensitive health or family matters.

7. Conduct Return-to-Work Interviews

When employees return after prolonged absences, arrange return-to-work interviews between them and managers or HR professionals. These interviews help ease employees back into roles and provide opportunities to discuss related issues while creating improvement strategies.

8. Consider Disciplinary Action

As soon as patterns of absenteeism emerge, arrange one-on-one meetings to discuss issues with employees and discover root causes. If absences don't improve, enforce workplace policies and enact appropriate disciplinary action, potentially including dismissal.

Creating an Effective Absence Policy

Company policies should include clear rules and regulations regarding employee absenteeism:

• How to report unplanned absences (to whom and when)

• How absences are tracked and documented through absence tracking systems

• Company sick note policy requirements

• Communication expectations during employee absences

• How wages or salaries are affected by absences

• Disciplinary actions for consistent, unexcused absences

• Flexible leave policies for various personal reasons

Include these in your employee handbook.

Modernizing Absence Management with Humaans

Today's complex work environment requires sophisticated workforce management solutions. Organizations need absence management software that calculates entitlements, tracks various absence types, and ensures legal compliance without administrative burden.

Humaans provides comprehensive absence management solutions.

By centralizing absence management, Humaans helps organizations reduce absenteeism rate while supporting employee well-being and maintaining a productive workforce.

Ready to transform your absence management? Connect with Humaans to discover how our platform can help you create a more engaged workforce.