Absenteeism

HRockets · April 2005

I read somewhere that the HR person should conduct monthly training sessions with department heads. I have taken it upon myself to do just that. The subject last month was on office romance, this month is absenteeism. Do any of you have any info you would share with me regarding this subject? I know most of the dept. heads have issues with employees earning a couple of days of sick leave and using it almost as fast as they earned it. The problem is they call in sick and then use the time that was accrued leaving the dept. shorthanded. These employees don't seem to understand the hardship this causes.I am wanting to put together a comprehensive report outlining the various circumstances which lead to absenteeism and what other companies/municipalities are doing to conquer this quest for the perfect workforce.

E Wart · April 2005

This isn't what you want to hear, but do away with sick days and put in a Paid time off program. Might help.
E Wart

deniseE · April 2005

I don't know how big your workforce is or what flexibility you have...but maybe if there was some kind of incentive to "save" sick days...they would be more inclined to hold onto them.

I've read reports that demonstrate that ee's use paid sick time to take care of personal matters and sometimes those that do this most frequently feel that they are underpaid and underappreciated.

Maybe there's a larger problem here that you could solve through your monthly meetings? This would be a great benefit to everyone!

dchr9203 · April 2005

Employees feel entitled to their "free" unscheduled vacation days (sick time), and you would be wasting your time trying to train managers on how to convince their employees of the cost and department impact of unscheduled absences. My last employer, employees were using sick time for time off to tend to their children's sniffles, etc. Put a stop to that. Sick leave, if a company has it, should be for the employee's personel illness. To use it for any other purpose is equal to using it as personal time off. Trained the managers on that aspect and once empowered, they felt more comfortable having employees turn in vacation time for anything other than a personal illness. For the most part, employee's were honest. As part of your report/training, you could present that more and more companies are moving away from sick leave and have a leave pool (PTO). Its amazing how unscheduled absenteesim declines under PTO programs. For some reason, employees are less inclined to use their earned PTO as frivolously as they use the accrued sick leave.

J9JC · April 2005

In CA it is manditory that an employer let an employee use half of their sick leave to care for a ill child, so I would check state law before I disciplined for taking a day off to care for a child. We don't even track it, if an EE uses all their time for child that is fine with us, we would rather be famly friendly. We do discipline if you go over you sick leave amount. I think the fact is there are abusers and others who actually have bad years of illness and they suffer due to the abuser making the company sensitive to the issues. Hard thing to balance for sure.

CA also does not let you discipline for using sick time. The thought process is if you offer it, and they earn it, you cannot then discipline them for it.

lorrie · April 2005

Our hourly employees receive 2 weeks paid vacation per year and nothing else, no PTO, no paid days, etc. While I don't recommend this policy, it certainly cuts down on the frivolous use of sick days!

I have always thought that a PTO policy where unscheduled days use up more hours than scheduled days would help with frivolous call-ins. (Eg. a scheduled day uses 8 hours from their account, a call-in for the same time period uses 12 hours from their account.) This way, the time is there if they really need it, but they have a nice incentive not to.

Or, if you want to offer rewards instead, you could offer an additional PTO day each year to those who had no call-ins (or 2 or fewer or whatever) the previous year.

If call-ins are causing problems, and a company is serious about wanting to cut down on them, I'm sure there are lots of incentives that would encourage employees to help out.

J9JC · April 2005

Would it be legal to charge more hours than the amount missed? I would think it wouldn't but I understand the idea.

HRinFL · April 2005

I worked for a company that recognized perfect attendance throughout the year. Ees that did not had perfect attendance received a certificate, a nice polo shirt with the co. logo and perfect attendance with the year on it. Each year, these ees were given a breakfast in their honor and received one paid day off to use however they wanted. This went over well and ees liked the recognition.

pork1 · April 2005

hrockets: I would recommend a "brain storming" session with your managers on this very topic. Break them down into two or three man teams and have them identify the problem/issues/concerns, etc. It will take you more than an hour possibly two or three hours just to identify the issues surrounding absenteeism. The enter action and discussions with this group of players is very educational and a great learning experience.

From the "identify the problem/issues/concerns" session you can then develope the next topic which says "what if anything, can we or do we want to do with this information?".

Absentism is a management issue and policy and procedures will put a "halter" on the subject, but it will never solve the issues that are multiplexed from the get go with ever member of the organization!

I hope this will help you!

PORK

HRockets · April 2005

The info received today has been informative. I work for a municipality, 9,500 residents, 109 employees, 8 dept. heads. The issues regarding absenteeism vary from dept. to dept., yet are not unique to eachother. The bottom line is the fact the dept. has to borrow an employee from another dept. or someone gets burdened with extra work. Thank you for your responses. I'm feel fortunate to have a group of HR professionals to write to. Not sure what next month's topic is. I'll be sure to write for help, again!

System · April 2005

I agree with Denise in that sick leave is most often abused by those employees who feel underpaid and not appreciated. These employees have an attitude of 'entitlement.' They view sick leave as theirs to be used as days off, especially if you have a 'use it or lose it' policy. There should be an incentive to NOT use it. We recently updated our policy with a 'buy back' plan. That, with consistent progressive warnings, seems to have helped.

I like your information HRockets. I too work for a local government. 14,000 residents, 110 employees, which includes 8 department heads. I think we're understaffed!

HRockets · April 2005

s moll as with most municipalities in this area we wear multiple hats. I wear the city secretary, human resource, records mgmt, and my favorite, Houston Rockets hats. Of course everyone else in the building routes for the San Antonio Spurs. I'm the lone ranger. We are located north of San Antonio.

If anyone has further info I welcome it. I'm leaving for Dallas in two hours and will use the info for the report.

Thank you for all of the input received.

Hunter1 · April 2005

Sam and HRockets: We have 30,000 residents, 250 employees, 13 department heads. I sometimes feel we're overstaffed, especially in police, fire, and 'community development'. They all work to control the lives of our citizens.

I've always been philosophically opposed to buy back plans for sick leave. Sick leave is no more than a short term disability insurance plan. Do we pay employees for not using their life insurance, health insurance, dental insurance, LTD, etc? I've been selling this message to our employees for years, and along with progressive discipline we do OK on controlling sick leave use (Or we did until State FMLA which in WI allows employees to substitute ANY accrued paid time off benefit for unpaid FML. What a nightmare!) When state FMLA was passed, all of a sudden fathers found it necessary to bond for six weeks with their newborns. What a great group of fathers we've created! And, employees proved in court that they didn't have to be in the neighborhood of their child to bond; a fishing trip to Canada certainly qualified, gambling in Las Vegas - Sure! Sons and daughters are caring for their elderly, sick parents on the City's dime. Oh, what a Family Friendly place we've become.

System · April 2005

I agree with your statement about sick leave being a short term disability plan. I preach that to employees and put it in newsletters. Sick time is not benefit time off with pay. Sick time is insurance. It protects from the loss of income. In addition to sick leave, we have short-term disability. Employees have no incentive NOT to use sick leave. At one time accumulated sick leave could be added to service time towards the employee's retirement. That option no longer exists. I moved to take sick leave away entirely and adjust PTO. The Police Department had a problem with that (imagine that?) Our 'buy back' plan rewards non-abusers. It's designed to make the employee reserve time in a bank and only the excess can be sold back at half price.

Family friendly? Ha. The Feds came up with a good one, didn't they? We'll see what this generation (since 1986) turns out to be like with all that bonding.

Kathy in Alabama · April 2005

I'd suggest keeping a sign in sheet so you can document attendance at the training sessions - especially on topics such as discrimination, harassment, etc. I purchased a 3 ring binder for each dept. manager (only 8 of us) so they can keep their training material handy and organized. They know at the first manager's meeting each month to bring their books. Finally, I use cases to document what the courts decided when possible to illustrate the points made - this helps make the point and leads to good discussion usually. Good for you for starting this program - it's great customer service for your department managers!

Sassy · April 2005

One idea that has been used to curtail absenteeism is that the first day off work is always annual leave, vacation or whatever your organization calls it, and sick leave can be used for the second day off work. This eliminates employees calling in sick just because they have spring fever.

Absenteeism

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