Unfortunately 100% attendance is difficult to achieve but there are measures you can take to manage absenteeism.

My recommendations manage absenteeism and increase staff engagement:

Step 1: make personal contact with the individual

It’s advisable for supervisor/managers to speak directly to the employee when they call in sick, rather than take a message or accept a text message.

Between 20% and 30% of absenteeism can be killed off by this call alone. The reality is that many employees suffer from manageable symptoms or symptoms that have passed.

Just talking to your employee can help tackle sickness. This requires no medical training, just a little common sense.

One of the most effective phrases for tackling absenteeism is very simply: “Call me back in 3 hours (or at lunchtime), and let me know how you are feeling, please.”

I recommend speaking to absent employees twice during their shift/working day. You have a contact telephone number for them at home or their mobile number. So, if your employee forgets to call you back, then you can make sure that the vital second conversation still happens.

It’s proven that 33% of people will come in for the second part of their shift/working day. This will significantly increase the attendance record, but still record the half-day missing. Fundamentally, by making that second call, the manager is resetting the boundaries of absenteeism and reinforcing the importance of attendance.

On-going sick-days and on-going communications between the employee and his/her manager are required in the contract terms (unless there is a Medical Certificate).  This is included as an additional measure to reduce length of absence.

Step 2: Return-to-work interview

Use a Self-Certificate Sickness Form and the Return To Work.  This is a face-to-face interview and the form is just for recording the notes of what was discussed.

The manager must sit down with the employee - to agree a plan to help them deal with problems and avoid further absence, if they are genuine.

Be mindful that form-filling is a ‘piece of cake’, but there are only so many times that an employee can sit in front of the manager and tell another creative lie before it’s identified their sporadic short-term absence as a problem.

To the genuinely unwell, this interview with the manager is compassionate management. At this point, it is also worth highlighting to the employee the financial implications of absence i.e., poor attendance is a disciplinary matter, the disruption to the team/shift and the importance of the employee in the success and profitability of the Company.

Step 3: covers dealing with long-term persistent problems

Step 4: Formal action

If my advice fails to address the problem, its necessary to progress to more formal disciplinary measures. This is the point at which you must step back from compassion or lenient management and assess the real impact of absenteeism on the success and profitability of the Company.

Contact me on holding disciplinary meetings but remember to stick to your guns and carry out the disciplinary action – the employee’s colleagues will also be pleased that the Company is taking a stance on this.