An Employer’s Guide to Dealing With Absence From Work

Employees’ absence from work can cost significant losses to a business. Read on to discover an employer’s guide on how to deal with absence from work.

Keyword(s): absence from work

Have some of your employees been failing to report to work without a valid reason?

Employee absenteeism is a common issue in the United States. On any given day, about 3 percent of the U.S. workforce will fail to show up at work.

As a business owner, employee absenteeism can cost you a lot. You might be forced to find temporary workers to replace the absent employee. If you don’t, productivity will suffer.

It’s important to know how to deal with absence from work the right way.

Keep Clear Employee Attendance Records

The first step to dealing with employee absenteeism is to keep accurate records of their attendance. With today’s advanced technology, this isn’t a hard thing to do. Simply installing a check-in system will enable you to capture employee attendance every day.

With these records, it’s easy to tell who didn’t come to work on a certain day. You can also draw trends before taking the next cause of action.

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For example, you can tell whether a certain employee has developed a habit of being absent from work.

Get in Touch with the Employee

We get it: there are employers who will suspend or even fire a worker as soon as they realize they’ve been absent without permission.

You’re probably within your rights to do this, but in the modern workplace setting, it’s not really the right thing to do. As an employer, you want to be empathetic.

Your organization has reporting procedures an employee needs to follow when they can’t make it to work. If an employee hasn’t communicated, it’s best to get in touch with them and know why they didn’t come to work. Perhaps they fell ill or got involved in an accident.

Of course, there are instances when an employee will simply decide to be absent from work without any legitimate reason. In this case, it’s okay to take more drastic measures.

Establish Why Absenteeism Rate Is High

You have cause to worry if a number of employees are going absent without permission. This probably means something is wrong somewhere. It’s your job to get to the bottom of it.

Sometimes employees will abscond work if they don’t like the workplace. Perhaps the workplace environment is toxic or they don’t feel motivated enough to come to work.

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Whatever is causing the high rate of absenteeism, you need to figure it out. Running an anonymous survey is an ideal way to get valuable feedback.

Depending on the information you gather, embark on fixing what’s wrong. If it’s a toxic workplace, start working on making it better. If they’re absent because you don’t pay them on time, you better fix the issue. Outsourcing the function to a company that offers payroll services can help solve the problem.

Employee Absence from Work Can Be a Major Issue

If it becomes a trend, employee absence from work can cost your business a lot of money. It’s your duty to step in and stop the issue before it spirals out of control. With this guide, you now know what you can do to solve it.

Keep reading our blog for more employer tips and insights.