Each day, a significant number of employees report sick leave. When the work absenteeism It may take a few days before they recover and become active again, but it may also be a longer period before they return.
Temporary inactivity of absent employees leads to lost work days that can slow down company performance, has negative consequences for productivity and raises the cost of production. In addition, frequent and long-term absences diminish a worker's subsequent employment and earnings prospects.
Absenteeism is in nobody's interest and a solution must be found.
Are there any programmes in place in your company to help reduce absenteeism? That may be the first step.
Many programmes are based on the principle that an employee's decision to report absence may be influenced if it is costly for the employee to be absent. Thus, companies may reducing absenteeism through the implementation of programmes broad, encompassing:
In addition, companies can implement qualification systems to allow long-term absentees to return to work with partial responsibility. The usefulness of such programmes depends on the specific local labour market conditions and the type of production of the enterprise.
The following could be identified three main categories of absenteeism reduction programmes. In general, the different programmes are complementary to each other, and their usefulness depends on the specific type of production process within the company. They are as follows:
1. Financial incentive programmes. There is strong evidence that workers respond to negative incentives. However, the extent to which firms can implement negative incentives may be limited (at least it is in Spain) due to the presence of mandatory minimum sick pay imposed by governments. Moreover, although there is some evidence that firms can use bonus schemes to reduce absence, the bonus depends on many indicators of worker output, and sickness absence is only one of them. Bonuses are therefore a costly way to reduce absence.
Conversely, a well-designed monitoring system by co-workers or supervisors can strengthen the application of financial incentives to reduce absence. However, a disadvantage of these incentives may be that, if they are too strong, employees may be wrongly encouraged to report to work. Consequently, the company may run the risk of these workers spreading contagious diseases, leading to increased absence and deterioration in the health of their co-workers.
2. Programmes to improve the quality of working conditions. There is ample evidence that absence is higher in hazardous and noise-exposed work environments. However, improving these conditions requires extensive and costly programmes. The alternative is to allow multitasking employees to switch between activities. A focus on working conditions could also improve worker morale, cushioning the negative effects on absence if performing paid work activities becomes more costly for the worker.
3. Specific programmes to enable employees to recover faster. One example is a qualification programme, in which long-term absent employees can partially take over their work tasks while being absent part-time. This is an effective approach and is often welcomed by both sides, employee and employer.
In general, there are sufficient opportunities for businesses to reduce absenteeism, However, effectiveness depends to a large extent on the specific type of production within the company and the institutional and economic context in which it operates. What usually does not fail in the medium and long term are the policies that take into account the motivation of the workforce. One of them is the flexible remuneration system, which increases the worker's purchasing power at the end of the month, while confirming that the company cares about their real needs.
