How to Reduce Employee Absence in the Workplace
Hundreds and thousands of working hours are lost every year due to absences in the workplace. So, getting to grips with any employee absence and ensuring that you are keeping levels as low as possible will greatly benefit your company. While you do not want people to come to work when they are ill, you also don’t want to create a situation where stress plays a role in keeping people off work. There is a growing focus on mental health and what you as an employer can do to ensure that you are helping employees manage it. So, here are a few actionable ideas to help reduce employee absence in the workplace.
Create a More Inclusive Working Environment
People will tend to stay off work more often when in an environment they feel doesn’t include them. This is true from both a physical and a mental standpoint, and both are becoming more widespread in knowledge awareness. So, whether you are trying to improve the office environment or the workplace culture as a whole, you should also look into mental health first aid training to help with issues that you cannot necessarily see for yourself. It is also worth including staff members in creating a more inclusive working environment as it is more than likely that they will have some great ideas to present to you – whether in a public or a private setting. It will often be that the ideas will be filtered through to your HR team, so you need to ensure that they are provided with all the right resources.
Explore Flexible Working Options
More and more workplaces are willing and able to provide more flexible working habits that do not necessarily have to reduce output quality. So, if your workplace is not currently as forward-thinking in this area, it could be worthwhile ensuring that you are doing more to allow some more employee requests to be taken seriously. This means people are more likely to work from home when possible rather than take a day off entirely. For example, they may have some childcare issues to deal with or some life admin that will be much easier to deal with from home. Ultimately, if you are too closed off in this area, you can easily find that your own workplace is starting to fall behind in modern times where more and more companies are embracing a flexible working policy. You will be making your employees’ lives harder for little reason and they will simply look elsewhere for a more accommodating job.
Introduce an Employee Wellbeing Program
Supporting your employees to make healthier choices is another way that you can help as an employer, as well as keeping absence levels down to a minimum. This could start off with the type of snacks that you are offering within the office, such as providing fruit rather than cake. It could also encourage more gym-based activities – whether in an external setting or within the office itself. Remember, as more and more awareness grows over mental health, there is plenty that you can do on this front as well. Many workplaces are looking to introduce counseling as a standard offering within their wellness programs.
Have Back to Work Interviews
The whole point of having back to work interviews is not all about trying to point the finger of blame at members of staff who have been off. It is trying to work out if there are any wider issues going on that you as an employer can help them deal with more effectively. Ultimately, having these interviews can be an excellent way of determining if there are any more widespread trends you will have to do something about. For example, if more and more members of a particular team are having time off, it could certainly be worth doing something about it sooner rather than later.
Reducing employee absence within the workplace is certainly going to be worthwhile. It will be beneficial to the success of the business of course, but it will also create a healthier and friendlier place to work. These are just a few of the major factors that can prove to make all the difference. Ultimately, these are areas that you have control over, and if you implement all of them, you are more than likely to see that there will be some improvements in this area. It is always going to be worth putting some actionable goals in place to measure your progress against and ensure you are heading in the right direction.
