UK businesses need to start tackling absence more effectively, especially during the winter months and use return to work interviews and accurate reporting and management tools.
New research from ELAS recently found that February had the highest average rate of sick days across the first half of this year, with an average of 337 people calling in sick each week, with March the second highest at 318 and January at 282.
The research also highlighted a huge spike in absentee rates on Mondays, with other days of the week being more consistent. Sickness rates are almost double that of Fridays (1,831 compared to 1,046) across the first half of the year, with 21.4% of all employees surveyed saying they had called in sick on a Monday compared with just 12.2% on Fridays.
Businesses need to take absence management much more seriously, especially when there are patterns occurring such as people regularly taking a Monday off. Reporting and management tools are necessity, as just recording sick days on a spreadsheet or informing payroll is not tackling the problem, and many employers don’t even bother to do that.
Neglecting to use return to work processes can also stop sick employees from getting adequate support from their employer and absentees from being adequately monitored. We all know that SAD can affect people in the winter but not noticing that an employee is consistently sick in the winter means the issue can’t be dealt with.
The same is true throughout the year and unless businesses change their approach to absence management they can never effectively manage it and tackle the peaks and troughs of sick leave, which can have a serious impact on productivity and cost the business a lot in the long run.
