Tag Archives: absence

How Do You Manage Absence in Your Business?

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How Do You Manage Absence in Your Business?

The cost of absence to your business could be huge. While it’s not always avoidable, you can reduce the cost and impact by managing it effectively. Here are some of the things you need to do:

Monitor it: You won’t have an idea of the problem if you don’t keep a record of the days and dates of absence. You need to know the frequency or length of absence to decide on the next steps.

Reporting absence: You must have rules about reporting absence and you must make sure these are followed.  If you don’t do this everyone will ignore them because they can.

Discuss the problem with your employee: There’s a legal requirement to consult with employees. They need your support and you need to know how to plan their work while they are away and make arrangements for their return.

Getting the payments right: Check the contract of employment to make sure you make the correct payments. As a minimum, employees are entitled to Statutory Sick Pay and they may also be entitled to be paid for holidays.

Return to work interview: These are key tool in deterring absence and making sure that you know what’s going on with your staff. They’re a great opportunity to nip problems in the bud.

Keeping in touch: Contact is vital if an employee is away for a long period. It helps you to provide support to them and at the same time understand how the situation may develop so that you can plan your business.

Phased return to work: This may be required after a long illness and may be suggested by the GP in a fit note.  You should consider these suggestions and discuss them with the employee before you make a decision.

What if you need to dismiss a member of staff due to long term absence? What are the benefits of managing absence? You can find out more from our free fact sheet – download it here.

What Do Employees Want from Appraisals?

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Many people have had bad experiences of appraisals, so many employers don’t enjoy carrying them out. However, for your business and your staff to progress, some form of regular appraisal is essential.

If you put yourself in the shoes of your members of staff, you can both get more from your time together. There are five things that your employees need to know at their appraisal:

  • Tell me what’s expected of me – talk to me about goals and expectations so that I can work towards them.
  • Give me the opportunity to perform – give me the chance to take responsibility and let me show you how good I am.
  • Tell me how I’m getting on – if you like what I’m doing, tell me; if you’re concerned about my progress, I need to know that too.
  • Give me support guidance and development – help me to grow and develop by giving me what I need to reach my goals.
  • Recognise my contribution – say thank you to show that you’re grateful for all the hard work I put in.

When you can meet these five needs, you’ll be able to carry out a much more effective appraisal, both for you and your employees. On 11 September I’m running a short workshop to help you carry them out even more smoothly. To book your place online, click here.

How do You Deal with Long Term Absence of Your Staff?

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A few weeks ago in this blog we looked at how to manage short term absence and the benefits of getting it right. Click here to read that post. In this one, we’re looking at long term absence.

Long term absence is generally more than four weeks. It needs active management of the absence and your employee’s return to work, so that you can plan ahead and organise work and temporary cover. When you’re dealing with long term absence you should regularly review progress in a way your employee is comfortable with. Ask them whether they prefer contact by phone, email, or home visits.

When making contact with them you can discuss:

  • How long they’ve been away
  • How they are feeling and whether they feel ready to return
  • If there is anything you can do to help.

Keeping in touch and remaining constructive, supportive and open to addressing their concerns about returning to work makes your employees feel cared for and valued.
Long term illness requires medical involvement to assess the effects of your employee’s condition, the likely duration of their time off and whether you can take steps to help their return to work.

Long Term Sick Leave leading to Dismissal

Hopefully, if you keep speaking to your member of staff about their illness and absence, it won’t come to this. You need to consider and discuss all the options with your employee before arriving at this conclusion. If you do reach this stage, you need to show that the absence was sufficient for the employee’s recovering and that fair procedure has been followed, in order to justify dismissing them. It should be a last resort.

Whatever happens, here are three things you should do:

  • Monitor – you don’t know if you don’t ask and you won’t remember unless you record it
  • Talk, talk, talk to your employee to offer support
  • Get medical advice – you’re not expected to be the expert.

How do you deal with long term absence? What issues have you had and how have you dealt with them?

Winter Sick Leave and How Best to Manage it

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How are you and your staff coping with the winter weather and the cold and flu bugs that always do the rounds at this time of year? Most people will need a bit of time off at some point during the year, to recover from an illness, so this post looks at the benefits of managing absence in a proactive way.

Both long and short term absences can cost a huge amount – both financially and in terms of manpower. It’s never an easy conversation to have with your employees and it can be difficult to keep up with what action is lawful to take. The bottom line is this – do nothing and the problem won’t go away, but could get worse. Finding out early on what’s going on with an employee who is absent can make a significant difference to your relationship and absence levels in the future. Talking to them allows you to get to the root of the problem and provide the support that they need. By focusing in on the absence it may also deter casual absenteeism – days off here and there.

Dealing with Short Term Absence

You should have a procedure in place that requires the employee to talk to a named person rather than leaving a message when reporting their absence. A standard form should then be completed recording the date, time, reason given and predicted time of absence, to make sure the relevant facts are gathered consistently for each absence.

Discussing the problem is essential especially when an employee is taking recurrent short term absences. Maybe there is a work issue which you can help them deal with and solve. Providing the support they need results in improved working relationships, morale and reduced absence.

You should always speak to a member of staff when they return to work, irrespective of how long they’ve been away. It shows you’re taking the situation seriously and acts as a deterrent for people who shouldn’t really be taking time off. Asking how someone is feeling after they’ve been off for even one day also shows that you care about them. Keep the conversation informal but take it seriously. Ensure confidentiality, have a clear structure, record what’s said and above all remain positive and supportive. You can ask them if they visited their GP, how they are feeling now and if there anything you can do to support them. Don’t ask any intrusive medical questions!

Communicating with your employees improves productivity and decreases absence, so follow these simple guidelines when dealing with short term sick leave. We’ll cover long term absence in another post in a few weeks time.

How do you deal with short term absence in your business?

Don?t Make a Pantomime Out of HR

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Here’s a little festive tale of HR for you, called the Cinderella School of HR.

Cinderella doesn’t like having to work long hours in the run up to Christmas, and drop everything every time her step mother wants something. She prefers being able to work flexible hours, as she knows what she needs to get done. Helping her identify ways of improving her work/life balance makes her much more engaged with her work.

The Ugly Sisters spend a lot of time telling poor Cinders what to do. They find fault with everything that she does and yet they never lift a finger to help. Why do they pick on their step-sister in this way? Because they’ve both realised that they’re not reaching the objectives that were set at their last appraisals – they’re both underperforming! Making Cinderella look bad means that their mother won’t notice how useless they are. Perhaps they need the Fairy Godmother to carry out their next appraisals and see what needs to be done?

Prince Charming used to be far from charming. He was always doing his own thing, despite having been told what to do on numerous occasions. He turned up late for princely duties; he didn’t send his reports back to the office promptly, so Buttons couldn’t get the invoices out on time. The Fairy Godmother was called in to see if young Charming could be sacked. Instead she suggested a capability meeting, where she explained the concerns and set some goals for Charming to achieve in time for another meeting in two weeks. The King called back just a week later to say that Charming had suddenly become utterly charming and was in fact now the best Prince that the King had ever known. All that from one meeting!

So if Cinderella doesn’t seem pleased to be at work, ask her what you can do to improve her work/life balance.

If you’ve got Ugly Sisters not meeting their targets, or Princes not being charming, instead of trying to get rid of them, talk to them about how you can improve their performance and wave your magic wand! You could be surprised by the results. Oh yes you could!

What can you do to make sure you don’t make a pantomime out of HR in your business?

What’s the Best Way to Deal with Underperforming Staff?

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In a recent blog post I introduced you to Heather, who was receiving poor performance feedback. Click here to read about Heather . Did you have any solutions for her?

Here are our suggestions.

While Heather has a lot of experience developing training courses, she’s not getting good feedback from delivering them. The cause of this could be that she:

  • Only likes writing courses and not the delivery
  • Has been given the delivery, when it wasn’t originally part of her job
  • She doesn’t have the confidence in delivery of the information when asked questioned
  • She thinks she’s being challenged when someone asks her a question.

How can we help Heather?

First it is important to acknowledge Heather’s strengths – her knowledge and ability to write training courses. Then we need to find out what she thinks about the feedback she’s getting and how she feels about the delivery of the courses. Does she enjoy that part of the job? If so, we can help her build up her confidence. Has she had any training in presentation skills? If not and she wants to continue with the delivery, we can look at the right training to help her.

In situations like this, it’s important to hear all the sides of the story, before rushing to any conclusions or imposing a solution. Work with your members of staff to find the best outcome for both of you.

How do you deal with issues of under performance in your business? Leave a comment here to share your views and ideas.

How to Be a Great Boss

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It can be tough at the top. Here are some top tips to improve your personal success as well as the success of the people working for you.

  • Lead by example. Provide guidance and support and set the benchmark for team cohesiveness and performance.
  • Understand yourself and work on bettering yourself. What are the things you do well and what can you improve? How effective is your management style? By investing time in developing your individual skills you will drive your business forward and reap the rewards in terms of how successfully you lead your team.
  • Be a good all-rounder and play to all your strengths. Technical skills are important but so are soft skills such as people management skills. Do not neglect one in favour of the other.
  • Learn to delegate effectively. You can’t do it all! By relinquishing responsibility to others you are not only ensuring that your efforts are always directed to best effect but also that the people around you feel empowered to make decisions and improve the business.
  • Build a team that can work without you. A team that falls apart when you are on leave or away from the office is not good business.
  • Maintain boundaries: Whilst it is good to develop a good personal relationship with your colleagues, you must establish appropriate boundaries. This will be important during times when you have to make tough decisions that may not always be welcome by others.

What do you do to make sure that you’re a good boss? Share your tips (or mistakes!) with us by leaving a comment here.

How Do You Get More From Your Staff? Part Two

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In a recent blog we looked at the importance of managing performance as a way of getting more from your staff, without dramatically increasing your costs.

Here are some top tips you can actually put into action, to get more from your people:

  • Provide a stimulating working environment that encourages members of staff to contribute to the progress of your business.
  • Encourage your staff to reach their full potential by providing opportunities to develop their skills through training and development, as well as coaching in the soft skills needed to be an excellent team member.
  • Carry out formal performance reviews on a regular basis, setting clear objectives and achievable targets; don’t wait for annual appraisals.
  • Build good relationships by providing regular informal feedback and guidance; allow your staff to air their concerns within an environment of trust and honesty.
  • Deal with issues as soon as they arise – don’t wait for them to become problems.
  • Offer a clear career path, to encourage employees to be the best they can be and stay with you for the long term.

How do you get more from your people? What have you done that has worked – or not worked? Leave a reply below.

If you still have questions about how to improve the performance of your team, come to our next workshop on 22 November 2012 near Henley. Places are free but limited, so click here for full details.

Why Bother with HR?

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What’s the point of HR?  Do you really need someone to spend time (and money) looking at the people in your business? Surely it’s quite simple and something you can do for yourself?

Here are a few ideas to help you decide whether or not to bother with HR.

The cost of getting it wrong.  Without the right HR systems in place, you could end up on the wrong side of the law, with a hefty bill to pay. A majority of employers believe that claims to Employment Tribunals will increase following the increase in the qualifying period of service to claim unfair dismissal from 1 year to 2 years. Part of the reason for the anticipated increase is that there is no system to prevent spurious claims being made to a tribunal. There is no potential downside for a claimant and potential for a financial windfall.  No win no fee solicitors support the disgruntled employee to have a go on the basis that the business will make a settlement to avoid legal costs. The figures of employment tribunal awards in the year 2011/12 have now been released and show that the median of all wards was £4560, the average award was £9133 and the maximum award was £173408. Keeping up to date with the legal issues is vital if you want to avoid unnecessary problems and payments.

The benefits of getting it right.  In order to avoid further claims businesses are making changes to their policies and procedures and making sure their managers are well trained in these procedures because a majority of employers believe that the most important factor behind a decision going against them at tribunal has been the role played by the line manager. In most cases the decision concerns the managers failure to follow their own company’s procedure!  On a far more positive note, good HR can really help to boost the profitability of your business. By putting HR management practices into your organisation, studies have shown that you can reduce employee turnover by 7%, increase sales per employee by 5.2% and increase overall financial performance by 6%.

Do you bother with HR? Do you do it yourself, or bring someone in to help with HR issues? Is it worth it, or just another business expense? Leave a reply below and let us know what you think.

Absence Management

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It is estimated that unauthorised absence costs the UK economy around £10bn-£12bn every year with employees failing to come to work for no good reason an average of 8 days each.   With the Olympics just a few short weeks away, and an expected rise is unauthorised absence predicted it important that you plan ahead to avoid unauthorised absence.

To stay on top of unauthorised absence you must put in place thorough absence policy that includes how absence will be managed; states clearly what absence is and is not permitted; details of how absence will be recorded and monitored; reporting lines and disciplinary procedures.

When you suspect an employee is taking an unauthorised day off you should:

  • Make contact on day 1 to establish the reason for the absence
  • If you are not satisfied that the reason for absence is genuine follow up with a letter on day 2
  • If the employee does not make contact and remains absent from work without notice you may have cause to assume resignation and formalise the appropriate procedures
  • If the employee returns to work you should always conduct further investigation in order to prevent a similar absence from occurring in the future and where necessary invoke a formal disciplinary process
  • If an employee takes annual leave despite being previously refused you must contact them immediately in writing and again invoke a formal disciplinary process.

Having in place a robust absence management policy will reap long term rewards by: –

  • Identifying the causes of poor attendance.
  • Providing support.
  • Increasing loyalty and motivation.
  • Deterring casual absence.
  • Identifying problems at work.
  • Improving morale and motivation.
  • Leading to reduction in absence.
  • Improving productivity.