With cold and flu season underway, is your business prepared for Winter Absenteeism?

With the arrival of Winter in the Southern Hemisphere, have you noticed an increase in the number of employees calling in sick?

Safeguard your business against Winter Absence

While we generally don’t get the sub zero temperatures experienced by our counterparts in the US and Europe, I'm sure i'm not the only one tempted to hit the snooze button and hide under the doona on these chilly mornings!

However, in addition to "illegimate sickies", the cooler weather also brings an increase in cases of genuine sickness, like colds and flus, which can directly impact a company’s bottom line.

According to research compiled by Kimberly-Clark Professional:

• It is estimated that the flu impairs a workers performance by between 20 and 40%
• On average 6.5 working days of productivity are lost per employee annually
• 10% of all illness related absenteeism is due to the flu

This unplanned absenteeism and drop in productivity, is a major concern for many organisations and employers must consider both the direct and indirect costs incurred when an employee is absent.

Organisations need to be proactive and plan in advance to safeguard their business from the effects of Winter Absenteeism.

Steps you can take to combat Winter Absence

If you can’t measure it, it’s pretty hard to manage it – as a first step, businesses need to establish an effective means of measuring and monitoring employee absence.

By effectively measuring absence and sickness in the workplace management can easily identify:

• How often a worker is absent
• How much working time has been lost
• If there is any particular pattern forming (i.e. a particular worker regularly calls in sick on a Friday morning)
• and Where absenteeism occurs the most (i.e. within a particular department, team)

Armed with this valuable information, management can assess the extent of their absenteeism issues and decide on the best means of tackling the problem.

How might an automated Time and Attendance System help?

A Time and Attendance system is a powerful Workforce Management tool for analysing employee attendance information and the associated costs.

By recording unplanned absences, holidays and paid parental leave, an automated Time and Attendance system provides you with a complete AbsenceProfile for an individual employee or group of employees for further analysis.

In addition, by measuring work absences an automated Time and Attendancesystem can identify how these absences impact the organisation's overall productivity, as well as identifying potential problem areas – allowing management to address any issues before they get out of hand.

In-built employee scheduling and rostering capabilities also enable management to plan projected manpower and work schedules according to available resources, skills sets etc...

For more information please feel free to call 1300 884 831 (+61 2 8762 7888 outside Australia), email sales@mitrefinch.com.au or visit us online.

Also see: Safeguard your organisation from Absenteeism Spike via the Australian Payroll Association website

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 

Businesses fear a mass sick day this Friday after Australia Day

Apparently our National Day is not an excuse for a hangover at work or “chucking a sickie” this Friday - how very unAustralian I hear some of you say! 

But, with hangovers costing businesses $5.6 billion a year, maybe it's time we had a rethink about overindulging during Australia Day festivities. 

NSW Business Chamber Executive Officer, Stephen Cartwright, urged revellers not to get carried away when they still had to put in a full day’s work before the weekend. 

“While Thursday will be a day off for many Australians to celebrate their national holiday, Friday is a normal working day, and employees will be expected to show up to the workplace ‘bright eyed and bushy tailed’”. 

Mr Cartwright said employees who planned to take a ‘sickie’ on Friday should be warned that they will be fooling no one. 

“Anybody who takes a ‘sickie’ on the Friday after Australia Day is not going to go unnoticed by their employer or their colleagues and it is likely to damage their professional reputation”. 

Employees who are planning an extra-long weekend have been urged to use their annual leave or talk to their employers to come up with alternative arrangements. 

“The impact of staff taking a ‘mass sick day’ on a business is significant in financial costs and lost productivity.” 

Read the full article on the NSW Business Chamber website here  

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. this Friday following Australia 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... 

In addition, Absence Profiling, 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 Australia 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 Australia Day, an automated Time and Attendance Software System can also take the stress out of payroll processing – by easily calculate overtime pay and public holiday penalties, and exporting this information direct to your external payroll application. 

Now all you have to worry about is how you are going to celebrate Australia Day! 

To find out more about Leave Management, Absence Profiling or Employee Time Management contact Mitrefinch today on 1300 884 831 or email sales@mitrefinch.com.au 

The Melbourne Cup and a mysterious spike in Sick Leave?

Today's Industry Search Bulletin has reported that Victorian employers have raised concerns about the tendency for workers to call in sick today as the Monday before the Melbourne Cup public holiday.

Mysterious spike in Sick Leave this week?

While many employees take a legitimate four-day weekend by applying for leave, many also tend to fake an illness, VECCI workplace relations policy manager Alexandra Marriott said.

"Anecdotally, we see from year to year that there are quite significant unplanned absences or sickies on that day," Marriott said. "It is a difficult problem to address because employers have limited capacity to assess the authenticity of a day of sick leave."

Marriott said it was difficult to put a figure on the costs associated with absenteeism on the day before the Melbourne Cup but said it created reduced productivity and engagement. But taking a four-day weekend using allocated annual leave was good for parts of the economy, particularly tourism, she said.

“Unplanned absenteeism is a major concern for many businesses and employers must consider both the direct and indirect costs incurred when an employee is absent”, said Jamie Fitzsimons, Marketing Manager at Mitrefinch Employee Management.

Direct costs are the benefits paid to the employee to provide income during an absence i.e. Sick, holiday and vacation pay as well as a disability benefit. However the indirect costs associated with unplanned absence are typically ignored or poorly tracked yet they can have a considerable impact to an organisation’s bottom line.

Some indirect costs include;
• A decrease in productivity, resulting in missed business opportunities or reduced customer service
• Fees of the temporary staff required to cover for the absent staff, or overtime costs for other staff covering for their absent colleagues
• Weaken morale of staff forced to cover for absent colleagues, may have a knock-on effect, establishing a culture for “chucking a sickie”

So what can you do to control the impact of absenteeism?

As the old saying goes, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”.

Organisations need to have an effective means of measuring staff absence in place, enabling them to assess the extent of the issue and decide the best means of tackling the problem.

A Time and Attendance system can monitor and record patterns of absenteeism, sick leave, and productivity, allowing you to establish any regular patterns or sudden unexplained changes.

For example, the Mitrefinch Time and Attendance solution, includes advanced Absence Management functionality allowing employers to profile staff by absence tracking. The system measures how the work absences of individual employees impact your business - by recording the number of absences and the duration of each incidence and providing a ‘score’ for each employee.

With this information readily and quickly available, management can identify workers suspected of abusing sick leave and possible absenteeism trends – allowing them to deal with problem areas before they do any more damage to the organisation’s bottom line.

So if you want to enjoy your Melbourne Cup festivities without having to worry about a loss of productivity for the rest of the week, give us a call today on 1300 884 831 or visit Mitrefinch to find out more about effective Absence Management.

(Sources: “Melbourne Cup holiday sees spike in VIC worker sickies” - http://www.industrysearch.com.au/News/Melbourne-Cup-holiday-sees-spike-in-VIC-worker-sickies-55621)

Are you monitoring Employee Absence and Leave? Maybe it's time you did!

An interesting article in HR Morning recently caught my eye and effectively highlights why organisations should maintain an accurate record of employee leave and absence.

The article in question reported that Douglas Rydalch, a Sales Agent for Southwest Airlines, tried to bring an Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) interference case up against his former employer.

Rydalch had a back injury that would flare up on occasion, and when it did he’d take leave under the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA).  While that’s all well and good, his injury seemed to flare up just before, or after, his regularly scheduled time off — particularly around public holidays.

For example: He used FMLA leave in conjunction with July 4, Labour Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s, as well as around his birthday. All up, he took FMLA leave in conjunction with regular days off at least 35 times.

Understandably, Southwest were beginning to get suspicious and began to monitor Rydalch’s FMLA use. And when he again took leave on Dec. 26 and 27, they terminated him for abusing FMLA leave and violating the company’s attendance policy.

But not to be outdone, Rydalch returned serve by filing a lawsuit against Southwest for FMLA retaliation and interference.

However the case didn’t last long and a federal court quickly threw out his lawsuit – as Southwest’s thorough documentation of Rydalch’s leave requests provided them with a very strong reason to believe that he was abusing his FMLA privileges.

Therefore, the court ruled Southwest was well within its rights to terminate Rydalch.

As HR Morning advises, this case serves as a good reminder to organisations to keep accurate records of employee leave requests. Then, if leave abuse is suspected, management will be able to show in court it has legitimate reasons for taking action against the offending employee.

Read the full article here

An Employee Time and Attendance system is a powerful tool for analysing and managing employee time and attendance.

By recording unplanned absences, holidays and other leave (compassionate, parental etc...), a Time and Attendance system builds a complete Employee Absence Profile which can be viewed on a weekly, monthly, or annual basis. While a Group Absence Profile allows you to analyse absence for a specific team, department or site.

By measuring the work absences of individual employees a Time and Attendance system can identify how these absences impact the organisation’s overall productivity, while real-time colour-coded reporting allows supervisors and managers to quickly identify potential problem areas and plan work schedules according to available resources, skills sets etc…

If you’d like to find out more about how an automated Time and Attendance system can reduce your company’s absence rates and boost productivity contact Mitrefinch Employee Management today on 1300 884 831 (Australia) or 09 363 9557 (NZ).

Our Free Guide to Choosing a Time and Attendance system is also available for download online.