Manage absence and sickness

The need for absence and sickness policies and procedures

These will help your workers to recognise that you treat the issue seriously and that they have certain responsibilities to fulfil. They should also help you prevent small problems developing into larger ones and may assist you in identifying and tackling underlying problems such as poor working conditions, work-life balance issues or lack of adequate training/career development.

You may also find that monitoring reasons for absences makes it easier for you to identify and deal with different types of absence appropriately. For example, you should treat an employee on long-term sick leave or who has a drug/alcohol addiction differently from an employee who regularly calls in sick on a Friday.

See the pages in this guide on employee illness as a performance issue and on managing absence problems as a disciplinary issue .

Reasons for unauthorised absence can sometimes be work-related, eg due to bullying or harassment, or external, eg due to marital problems. Work-related reasons could stem from poor working conditions . Consider improving them by:

• offering flexible working patterns, training and promotion opportunities, staff incentives etc
• examining job design
• using temporary workers during busy periods
• developing policies and procedures to tackle anti-social behaviour

However, remember that many unauthorised absences are due to unforeseeable sickness or accidents and that you also need to plan for authorised absences resulting from contractual and legal entitlements such as holidays or parental leave.

Having absence and sickness policies and procedures in place can bring clear business benefits. These include improved productivity, profit making and morale, higher retention rates and motivation, as well as lower insurance costs. You may also find that your reputation is improved and that this in turn aids recruitment.

Subjects covered in this guide

• Introduction
• The need for absence and sickness policies and procedures
• Basic principles of managing absence and sickness
• Measuring and monitoring absence and sickness
• What to include in absence and sickness policies
• Employee illness as a performance issue
• Managing absence problems as disciplinary issues