3 Straightforward Ways to Reduce Absenteeism

3 STRAIGHTFORWARD WAYS TO REDUCE ABSENTEEISM

FROM A LEADER IN WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS

www.mitcsoftware.com

3 STRAIGHTFOWARD WAYS TO REDUCE ABSENTEEISM

INTRODUCTION Unplanned absences, late arrivals and early departures invariably cause disruption, imperil organizational effectiveness, decrease morale among co-workers and can leave positions understaffed or completely unstaffed. Often, absenteeism also results in additional costs in the form of unplanned overtime.

The systems at many organizations can inadvertently encourage absenteeism and excessive costs. Organizations that manage their workforce passively are more likely to suffer from the practice of employees who arrive late, take long lunches, leave early, and abuse paid time off. These poor attendance problems can in turn impact service, revenue and costs. One person’s absenteeism can be another employee’s overtime.

In most service organizations, payroll-related costs represent 50-75 percent of the overall budget. The importance of the many workforce issues that beset any organization is magnified in service organizations, as payroll is the biggest budget item.

Furthermore, two-thirds of unplanned absences are not related to illness.

“Organizations that manage their workforce passively are more likely to suffer from the practice of employees who arrive late, take long lunches, leave early, and abuse paid time off.”

1. AUTOMATING TIME AND ATTENDANCE

Bottom line: whatever you’re emphasizing in your organization

Organizations with an effective, real-time, time and attendance

by measuring it — that will be the area that improves. This is

system report a lower rate of absenteeism, no shows, late

a no-brainer in some ways, but the implications are more far-

arrivals and early departures than organizations dependent on

reaching than a passing glance reveals.

paper timesheets or an honor system — such as online timesheets. The lack of effective systems for monitoring time and attendance in real time can encourage absenteeismrelated problems.

If you measure speed to market, you will get your products there faster. If you measure quality, you will have a better product. If you measure costs, you will have a cheaper product. If you measure time and attendance, you will get better attendance.­

Organizations using a real-time, time and attendance solution

In the old days, the points of cost, speed, and quality were plotted

suffer less from unscheduled absenteeism, particularly from

on a triangle that always retained the same area. This implied that

employees showing up late or leaving early. This in turn tends

you could pick two out of three: improvement in one area always

to lower payroll costs by reducing overtime for staff forced to

came at the expense of at least one other area. Those days are

provide coverage outside their usual schedule and/or improve

gone. As Peter Sheahan, a young wunderkind in management

levels of customer service.

consulting from Australia says, “Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick three and then add something extra.”

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3 STRAIGHTFOWARD WAYS TO REDUCE ABSENTEEISM As any business executive knows all too well, when managing employees, you don’t automatically get the behaviors you say you want. You may really believe, for instance, in the need for excellent customer service. But just saying that you value it

GOOD

doesn’t mean that your employees will act in the way you wish they would — arriving on time and working their full shift (or that customers will believe you can deliver it).

The problem is that you don’t get behaviors just because you expect them. You can posture all you want and catch

FAST

CHEAP

people doing something wrong occasionally (or, if you’re an enlightened manager, catch them doing something right), but that is too casual and disorganized. It leaves too much to chance, and you almost certainly won’t end up getting what you want.

The best way to let people know that something is important is to measure it and report on it. The only sure fire way to ensure that your people do what you want them to do is to inspect what they are doing and how that impacts the results. If you want to ensure that you consistently do get the behaviors you really want, you have to set processes and procedures in place

“As Peter Sheahan, a young wunderkind in management consulting from Australia says, ‘Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick three and then add something extra.’”

to inspect them.

If you want employees to show up on time and leave on time, just saying you want it wouldn’t make a bit of difference unless it is reinforced by concrete action. This is an essential step in getting people to do what you want them to do. Only if your staff knows that you are looking will they continue to do the things you want them to do.

2. COMBINE ADVANCED EMPLOYEE SCHEDULING AND AUTOMATING TIME AND ATTENDANCE When combined with Advanced Employee Scheduling, automating time and attendance takes the battle against

In fact, employees showing up late or leaving early — disguised

absenteeism, late arrivals and early departures onto another

by timesheet falsification in a manual system — can also result

level. If scheduling is integrated into time and attendance, it

in a financial penalty. This is a further incentive for employees

can compile performance statistics for each employee. These

to reduce unauthorized absenteeism.

statistics include tracking frequent offenders, whether due to late arrivals, early departures, unauthorized attendance or

“When managing employees, you don’t automatically get the behaviors you say you want.”

overlapping shifts.

Self-service allows employees to view schedules for themselves and for their location, to check open positions and to submit leave applications with little or no intervention by managers.

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Optimal placement of workers results in improved attendance.

scheduling, personnel and training information can easily and

Employees are more likely to show up when a location is

inexpensively be delivered to Android™, iPhone®, BlackBerry®,

properly staffed, and each task is more likely to receive the

and iPad® tablet or any smart phone device. Beneficial features

attention it deserves. As a result, attendance and service are

of utilizing mobile technology can include:

improved across an organization, its reputation improves, and it retains employees more easily.

Maintaining constant contact with remote employees Reminding employees where and when their next shift is

Advanced Employee Scheduling can also accommodate worker preferences to improve morale and reduce turnover.

Providing short work instructions for that shift

The resulting reduction in turnover is an important indirect

Generating these and other alerts to employees streamlines

benefit, since the cost of a new hire can be substantial and

the communication process and improves morale. Examples of

there are fewer “gaps” during the year between a termination

these alerts include:

and a new hire starting. Replacing an employee who has gone to an organization that can better accommodate their

“Training required”

work-life balance generates costs in the areas of recruitment,

“License expired”

interviewing, training, and new worker inefficiency.

“Happy birthday”

3. USE TEXT MESSAGES OR EMAIL ALERTS FOR IMPROVED EMPLOYEE COMMUNICATION

“Happy anniversary” “Review due” “Thank you for working on a holiday”

By taking pro-active steps, organizations can improve employee attendance and operational efficiency by simply communicating specific work instructions for a particular shift by email or text. In this day and age, not working around how people naturally communicate is pre-historic. Exploiting the universal use of mobile phones to give employees access to important information at any time and in any place should be part of every organization’s plan. Time and attendance,

ABOUT MITC MITC provides modular workforce management solutions and services to support all the needs of service organizations — time and attendance, advanced employee scheduling, payroll rules and reporting engine, workforce analytics, payroll and billing integration, and more. For 25 years, MITC has grown to serve over 1,500 organizations (with anywhere form 5 to 10,000 employees) in the USA, the UK , Africa, Australia, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand. They have selected MITC to help control costs, save time, improve productivity and ensure compliance.

Visit www.mitcsoftware.com to learn more.

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