|
|
The Cost of Sick Leave Abuse
This About.com article on Sick Leave Abuse highlights both the direct and indirect costs of unplanned employee absence:
- “Unscheduled absenteeism can cost up to an average of $602 per employee, per year”
- “This cost does not include indirect costs such as overtime pay for other employees, hiring temps, missed deadlines, lost sales, sinking morale and lower productivity. Indirect costs can add up to 25 percent to the direct costs, according to Employee Benefit News and HR News”
- “In a survey of eleven U.S.-based telecommunications organizations, 72 cents of every dollar of costs related to employee absence stems from lost productivity, rather than hard costs, such as health care and disability benefits”
How Can Sick Abuse Be Managed Effectively?
Thinking Made Easy, a business management blog, discussed effective management of sick leave abuse:
- “Just as an employer analyzes turnover, the organization should also look at sick leave abuse trends. Is leave usage higher in one department or under particular supervisor? Are workplace practices or policies affecting absences? Do children’s illnesses in turn lead to employee's time-off? Finding the root cause of sick leave abuse problems helps in addressing core issues”
How Can Sick Abuse Be Managed Effectively?
This article, from HR.com discusses the results of a global survey focused on the financial implications of employee time-off
- “The capture and management of Paid Time Off (PTO) is an area which is poorly managed across companies of all sizes, leading to a significant portion of PTO that is taken but not reported or recorded. In most companies, senior management views this area with a sense of apathy, knowing that abuse exists, but paying little attention to it. The underlying assumption is that there is little return on investment associated with managing PTO.”
- “However, in recent years, many companies are realizing that the liability of PTO is indeed "real money", especially when large amounts have had to be paid out during layoffs. As voluntary turnover increases, fueled by an improved economy, companies once again are facing large payouts of unused PTO balances.”
- “All of a sudden, senior executives are seeing the management of PTO as an opportunity to improve ongoing operating costs and reduce liability.”
- “The process of requesting, reporting and tracking PTO is manual and cumbersome in most companies. As with any process, we have found that when employees or managers have to go through multiple, cumbersome steps to complete a task that is not considered a priority, they are likely to put it off or not do it at all. In addition, companies typically still leave it up to the employee to initiate and follow-up on the process of requesting time-off. Since this requires a long, paper based request form and a walk down to the HR department, it is easy to "forget" or put-off. This is especially true of the occasional afternoon or day-off due to an illness or dental appointment. The Lesson: Make it easy and intuitive to report PTO, and it is more likely to get done.”
Managing Employee Absence
An article from the blog, Helium.com highlighted the importance of effectively managing employee absence:
- “While managing employee absence can be problematic, a well prepared manager can reap the benefits and minimize the disruption and financial loss caused by employee absences of all kinds.
- “A rise in the frequency of unexpected absences can alert you to other possible problems in the workplace. A general dissatisfaction with the work or culture of the workplace can be as infectious as an illness and needs to be brought out into the open and resolved.”
Sick Leave Abuse
Business Knowledge Source, a website focused on providing business management advice, reiterates the value of analyzing absence data:
- “Make sure that supervisors or administrators track absenteeism
and verify reasons for it. Take time to analyze causes for this absenteeism.”
Time Clocks by Allied Time
Keep track of employee time and efficiency with cost-effective management systems and time clocks from Allied Time.
|
|
|
