Free setup service

We understand that the workload involved when transferring from one system to another can be daunting. That's why, until the end of May 2007, we are offering to do the transfer for you. Simply complete the setup form and send it to us. We guarantee to have you fully set up, all your employees informed and properly trained within 48 hours.

We won't make a big fuss because it's what we do; simplify and streamline otherwise complicated processes.

PS. We'll even set up your trial of OfficeControl (up to a maximum of 20 employees)

The need for an absence policy.

Absence policies are important as they communicate the company’s procedures and expectations to your employees. They are the first step before implementing any absence management tools such as:

• Return to work interviews
• Trigger mechanisms to review attendance
• Attendance bonuses or incentives
• Absence rate as a key performance indicator

Ensuring your employees understand what is required of them, what your company considers acceptable and what the consequences are of any absence before any absence is taken is essential.

Broadly the policy should include chapters covering the following topics:

Policy Statement

1. Your commitment to employee wellbeing
2. Briefly describe the what the policy explains
3. Who has been involved in the creation of the policy & encourage staff involvement

Key Principles

1. Describe your sick pay scheme
2. Punctuality & attendance expectations
3. List support offered for genuine reasons of absence
4. Occupational health adviser involvement
5. Disciplinary procedures
6. Confidentiality
7. Notification of absence procedures
8. Self-certification arrangements
9. Return to work discussions
10. Absence due to disability/maternity

An example policy can be found at the ACAS website

Useful indicators of unplanned sickness absence

Sickness absence from your employees can affect your business in different ways, from lowering morale to the administrative task of covering their workload. Each of these effects will hinder the productivity and success of your business and its reputation in your industry and more importantly to your customers. That's why it is important to maintain a system that will closely monitor all absence from work and alert you when the situation becomes unacceptable.

There are a number of ways to measure absences, the most common being the absence rate. This rate shows the lost time that the individual has occurred over a period of time, usually a year. The UK average absence rate is 3.5% which amounts to 8 days absence per employee per year (CIPD survey 2006). The absence rate is calculated as follows:

Absence rate (%) = Days absent in period/Workdays in period

The absence rate is a good indicator of how much absence your business is enduring but it is flawed when viewed in isolation because it lumps all types of absence together and 1 or 2 long term absences can overly impact the result.

In order to get a view of absence levels weighted to highlight more disruptive absence namely frequent, short term sickness you will need to employ the Bradford factor. The Bradford factor marks an employee who has taken 10 incidents each of 1 day with a higher Bradford factor to an employee who has taken 1 incident of 10 days. The calculation is as follows:

Bradford factor = (Number of incidents in period x Number of incidents in period) x Total number of days absent in period

It is important to review the Bradford factor for an employee against their colleagues Bradford factors either across the whole company or in their department to gather comparative examples.

A similar method of monitoring absence is to count the total number of days absent due to sickness and the number of incidents over a specified rolling period. This is more advantageous than the Bradford factor alone as it takes in to account any improvement in absenteeism over time from the employee, perhaps after the situation being discussed with their line manager.

This method of monitoring offers the opportunity to set trigger points. This allows the company to set a number of incidents and a number of days in a rolling period that, once breached, is considered to be unacceptable absence and an alert is added to the employees record against incidents or number of days (which ever has been breached). The corresponding report created should be sorted by incidents and then days because, as proved for the Bradford factor, incidents are more disruptive and so should be highlighted as such.

What can you gain by improving the management of absence?

Everyone takes holidays and falls sick from time to time and that’s something you can’t change. Furthermore you already have an absence process in place. Why change?

Unless you are assigning significant resources and time, we feel that there is a better, more effective way to manage and control all absences from your company.

What have you got to gain by improving the management of your company’s absence?

• Accurate implementation of annual leave entitlement
• Improved application of absence policies
• Quicker processing of annual leave and sickness
• Detailed recording of every sickness absence
• Reduced sickness absence
• Better control of leave approvals by line managers/HR
• Reduced administration

You’re probably thinking that to improve these areas will have to cost your company more time and money than it does currently. This isn’t the case. We will show you how it will take less time to manage than your current method, be more accurate, record better information and most importantly, cost you less. The new procedure will very quickly save your business money by reducing sickness absence and manage leave more effectively (by maintaining suitable work levels).

Over the course of this monthly newsletter we will cover each of these areas in more detail or you can simply go to OfficeControl for the answer straight away.