Feeling the worse for wear after Anzac Day?

Receive any unconvincing sick calls this morning? Tempted to chuck a sickie yourself?

While Anzac Day is a day off for many Australians to celebrate the national holiday and raise a glass to those who serve, Thursday is unfortunately a normal working day, and employees are expected to show up to work ready for action.

Sounds good in theory, but when a public holiday falls in the middle of the week, it deosn't take an expert to predict there will generally be an increase in people not turning up for work.

However, chucking a ‘sickie’ the day after a public holiday fools no one, and does not go unnoticed by employers or colleagues – which can prove damaging to your professional reputation.

In addition, as the NSW Business Chamber advise, the impact of staff taking a ‘mass sick day’ can significantly harm a business, both in terms of financial costs and lost productivity. 

Employees who do plan on extending a mid week day off into an extra-long weekend are urged to use their annual leave or talk to their employers to come up with alternative arrangements. 

With an automated Time and Attendance Software System, Absence Profiling and Reporting, allows you to see who took a sick day, when, and if any particular pattern is forming. For example, you could check back to last year and see if there was a spike in sick days taken the day after Anzac Day or other popular public holidays – and take appropriate action. 

If you happen to work in an industry where staff are required to work on public holidays, an automated Time and Attendance Software System can also take the stress out of payroll processing – by easily calculating overtime pay and public holiday penalties, and exporting this information direct to your external payroll application. 

Leave Slots are an innovative holiday planning feature now available in the latest release of Mitrefinch’s Time Management System. 

This new functionality enables managers and supervisors to limit how many employees can be off on a given day or time period e.g. the Thursday after Anzac Day - averting potential staffing shortfalls and ensuring you have sufficient staff on hand to meet demand. 

Employees can view available Leave Slots online and they will be unable to request leave once the limit has been reached – hence HR won’t need to deal with multiple requests from staff on what days are available etc... 

If you don’t have an automated Time and Attendance Software System, maybe it’s something you need to plan on putting in place now to be ready for next year!

For more information contact Mitrefinch on +61 2 8762 7888, email sales@mitrefinch.com.au or visit us online