Best Practices and Resources for Managing Employee Absenteeism

Managing employee absenteeism in the workplace is a universal problem, but it doesn’t have a one-size-fits-all solution. The underlying causes of absenteeism can range from medical and mental health issues to dissatisfaction with the work environment.

Whether it’s unscheduled absences or frequent tardiness, getting to the root cause of attendance issues is the first step to dealing with them. With a clear leave of absence policy and employee attendance tracker, you can reduce your absenteeism rate and encourage good attendance.

Let’s take a look at why managing employee absenteeism is so challenging and how modern HR systems help you track employee attendance with ease.

Why Managing Employee Absenteeism Matters

Managing employee absenteeism isn’t about squeezing the most work hours that you can out of the week. After all, modern human resources teams know the benefits of flexible schedules, remote work policies, and paid time off (PTO).

The problem is when certain team members aren’t showing up to work, doing their fair share of the workload, or giving you advance notice of their days off.

Here are three ways that excessive absences can have an impact.

1. Decreased Productivity

Employees who don’t show up to work or put in a full workday can impact their team’s productivity — and ultimately your bottom line. Not only are they likely to fall behind on their own work, but other team members have to pick up the slack. Deadlines will get missed, and entire workflows can be disrupted.

2. Lower Employee Morale

No-shows, tardiness, and unplanned absences can harm employee engagement and morale. When employees don’t face disciplinary action for excessive absenteeism, it sends a signal that timeliness and reliability isn’t a high priority at your workplace.

3. Potential Compliance Issues

Chronic absenteeism can become a compliance issue — especially if an employee is eligible for sick days or a leave of absence and you aren’t providing it. The more notice an employee gives you of their plan to take leave, the more time you have to run it by your HR team to ensure it complies with employment law and company policy.

What Are the Different Types of Absences?

Employee absenteeism can take many forms. How to manage it depends on the type of absence, the reason for the absence, overall absence rates, and other factors. Here are just a few of the most common types of employee absenteeism:

• Unplanned leave is a type of absence that may or may to be justified but arises unexpectedly or without sufficient notice. Some unexpected absences are taken for medical reasons and may be protected by laws like the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). Others may be unexcused absences in which the absent employee provides no valid reason for being out of work.
• Recurring lateness or tardiness occurs when an employee consistently turns up late to work. This can happen even when you offer remote work or flexible work schedules if the employee isn’t available when they’re expected to be. 
• Long-term absences may include family and medical leave, military leave, or a sabbatical. Often, these types of absences are approved and justified, but they can still impact your work schedules and productivity if you don’t plan ahead.

Best Practices for Managing Absenteeism

Unplanned absenteeism costs the business sector “$600 billion a year, with an average cost of $4,080 per full-time employee,” according to Forbes. Follow these practices to manage absenteeism and reduce the impact on your bottom line.

Set Clear Attendance Policies

One of the best ways to address absenteeism is to have an effective attendance and leave of absence policy. This way, your employees know exactly how much sick leave or PTO they’re entitled to, how far in advance they should request vacation days, and what to do if they need to come in late or call in sick.

If employees don’t follow the guidelines, you can point to your attendance policy and give them a chance to comply before taking disciplinary action.

Document Incidents

Documenting unexcused absences, tardiness, and other attendance issues serves to establish a paper trail of an employee’s behavior and the steps you took to address it. This protects you if you ultimately need to terminate an employee for absenteeism.

When you track employee attendance with a platform like Pulpstream, it’s easy to keep a record of incidents and call out absenteeism before it becomes a serious issue.

Address Root Causes Proactively

Finally, it’s important to get to the root cause of attendance issues: Are they unique to individual employees or impacting multiple team members? If absenteeism is a major issue at your organization, consider offering employee counseling, wellness programs, or childcare to address the root causes of absenteeism.

Low employee morale, a lack of quality healthcare, and employee relations issues can all contribute to absenteeism. 

Why You Should Use an Automated HR Management System

From time cards to spreadsheets, traditional time-tracking methods require a substantial amount of human input and oversight. Modern HR management systems streamline the process with automatic time-tracking, integrated leave management, built-in reporting tools, and self-service portals. You can use them to do the following.

Centralize Attendance Records

Instead of storing records in various formats or leaving them up to individual managers, use Pulpstream to centralize records in a single cloud-based platform. Now, employees, managers, and your HR team can easily view an employee’s attendance history, check their accrued sick leave or vacation days, and track or manage a leave request.

Employees get access to a self-service portal they can use to request leave from their desktop or mobile devices, reducing unexplained and unexcused absences.

Flag Recurring Issues

Pulpstream’s attendance-tracking tools help you identify common employee attendance issues before they become a problem. Spot recurring lateness, excessive absenteeism, and even cases of FMLA abuse that would otherwise go unnoticed.

Use our built-in dashboards to track absence rates over time, and see how company policies influence employee morale and attendance.

Integrate Absence Data

Employee attendance and leaves of absence go hand-in-hand. You need to know how many hours an employee has worked to calculate their accrued sick time, paid leave benefits, and eligibility for leave under federal and state leave laws.

For example, employees can take up to 12 workweeks of leave under FMLA if they’ve performed 1,250 hours of work in the past year and meet other qualifying criteria. In many states, employees accrue paid time off for each hour they work.

Pulpstream’s leave of absence automation tools allow you to easily approve or deny leave requests based on pre-determined criteria, track leave balances, and keep up with your obligations under employment law.

Automate Employee Absence Management With Pulpstream

Managing employee absenteeism is integral to maintaining a healthy workforce, but it’s important to identify the underlying causes of absenteeism. When you use modern HR automation tools to track employee attendance, you can quickly identify patterns and choose the right remedy — whether it’s taking disciplinary action, providing a flexible work schedule, or facilitating a medical leave of absence under FMLA.

Pulpstream’s comprehensive absence management tools can take care of it all, from tracking short-term leaves of absence to handling intermittent leave.

Request a demo today to see for yourself!