Absence management

Absence management is used by companies to manage and reduce time employees are absent due to illnesses or injuries. This is done mainly through applying relevant policies and procedures.

Here is the short list of most popular types of absence:

1. Sick leaves, usually short term;
2. Unauthorized leaves or regular lateness;
3. Authorized leaves, such as maternity and paternity leaves, annual leaves, educational leaves and others, as defined by regulations of the country.
4. Long-term sick leaves, in cases of serious injuries or illnesses.

Measuring lost time

The most tricky part of absence management is understanding the extent to which regular or irregular absences can raise issues for the company. Which absences should be paid more attention and probably punished harder and which of them can be disregarded not to put much stress on an employee?

Any absence is lost time for a company, so by measuring this time lost, you can understand causes and consequences of absence issues. Some of the useful metrics include:

• the lost time rate, which equals to % of possible working time lost to absence;
• the frequency rate – avg number absence periods per employee;
• the Bradford Factor, which can help to identify persistent short-term absence of employees.

Absence management policies

So which are those policies and practices that help to manage absence?

Usually each company or organization defines its own absence standards. Some companies require a fixed time schedule and no lateness, as business processes are heavily dependent on human presence, while other types of businesses can offer flexible working or even remote job, so being late for 5 minutes will not be regarded as a violation.

Anyway, each company should have clearly defined absence policy, including description of consistency processes and absence measurements. Absence management should also support employees in reducing their absence, for example by providing opportunities to work in a flexibly or remote.

In PeopleForce HRM you can easily track, who’s absent and for what reasons, as well as see sick leaves and time off, requested by employees. Request a demo and feel free to explore Absence management features of PeopleForce.