Employee attendance monitoring to enable efficient sickness absence management

The implementation of proper employee attendance monitoring systems is a key requirement for managing sickness-related absence in a proficient way, findings from a recent poll published by the Canada Life Group Insurance seem to suggest.

The survey found that a staggering 93 percent of employees would come to work when they are ill. Excessive workloads, job security fears and financial concerns all contributed to presenteeism, with nearly a third (29 per cent) of employees reporting that they had too much work to be able to take time off even if they were ill and 16 per cent saying that they were 'made to feel guilty by other members of staff' if they took sick leave.

The overall result of this negative attitude to sick leave is that 24 per cent of staff chose to use their holiday allocation when they were ill to avoid creating a poor sickness record.

Paul Avis, Canada Life Group's marketing director, said: "The persistence of presenteeism in the UK workforce is a troubling sign that employers have failed to take active steps to promote health and well-being in their organisation. Not only is presenteeism detrimental to the individual concerned, it has a negative impact on the wider business as well, encouraging the spread of illness and draining productivity.

"Employers must have a clear sickness absence system in place that emphasises employees will not be penalised for taking time off if they are genuinely ill."

A top-range employee attendance monitoring system can easily determine the best strategies to tackle the problem of excessive presenteeism and determine employers to set comprehensive policies to support employers in dealing with sickness absence.

The Tensor WinTA.NET integrated workforce management solution incorporates a dedicated Absence Planning and Entitlement Management feature. It comes pre-loaded with graphical calendar charts that provide a colourful way of viewing an individual's or a department's absence records.

Each employee can be allocated different entitlements for absence such as annual leave or allowed sickness. As absence is booked and taken, the remainder available for each entitlement is updated. Entitlement formulae are used to calculate more complex entitlements calculated on a rising scale based upon length of service.

If you'd like to find out more about the Tensor workforce management solutions, just contact our team or Book a Demo, we'll be more than happy to answer all of your questions and queries.