Absenteeism in the workplace can be a severe problem as it affects company morale, productivity, and ultimately your bottom line. In fact, according to The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), employee absenteeism costs $1685 per employee in the U.S every year. This comes up to a total of $225.8 billion annually.
This is a considerable loss, and despite this, very few companies look into how they can reduce absences in the workplace. If you want your employees to stay motivated, to be productive and efficient in their everyday tasks, it is vital that you take steps to make them want to come to work and tackle common causes of absenteeism.
Below, we outline the various steps you can take to reduce absenteeism in the workplace:
Use a time clock software
A time clock software can accurately register the exact time when employees clock in, how long their lunches and breaks were, and what time they left the office. All they have to do is punch in when they enter and leave, and a time clock software automatically records every relevant information for each employee.
This gives you an automated and extremely reliable way to track and monitor every employee’s time so that you can access the record any time and check which employees are regularly absent.
Reduce work-related stress
Workplaces have become the most significant source of stress for many people, which causes them to miss work more often. In addition to this, stress can cause various health problems, not to mention that it greatly diminishes productivity.
When there are many unplanned absences in the workplace, it creates even more stress on the present employees as they have more workload. All these translate to a massive loss for a company.
A great way to tackle this issue is to create an open office environment where managers provide reasonable workloads that employees can handle. Such a culture can also encourage employees to talk freely about any work-related stress they may be having with a counselor, the HR manager, or their bosses.
Introduce a wellness program
Various studies have found that there is a strong correlation between wellness initiatives and unplanned absenteeism in the workplace. In fact, a Towers Watson survey found that organizations that have wellness programs experience less unexpected leaves.
What makes wellness programs so great is that they help improve physical health. Additionally, they also help to reduce stress among employees and improve morale in the office. It also helps to reduce health care costs for employees. This means that your employees will have fewer reasons to miss work.
Improve workplace culture and morale
You need to give your employees reasons to want to come to work on working days. Otherwise, they are just forcing themselves to get to the office and do the bare minimum or just enough work to get through the day. Or in many cases, they just might never make it to the office in the first place and regularly call in sick.
By improving workplace culture and morale, your employees will feel a sense of belonging in the company, which in turn, motivates them intrinsically to give their best efforts.
Offer a fair amount of vacation days and paid time off
Vacation days and paid time offs can be great motivators for employees to not miss work except for during their vacation. They have time to recharge and relax, and when they come back to work, they can be more regular and productive. Of course, this requires strategic planning on the part of the management so that you can budget for unplanned absences and paid time off.
