Employees crying sick after Anzac Day to cost Aussie Business at least $36 million

The NSW Business Chamber predicts that about 173,000 Australians will pull a "well-known and obvious scam" by taking this Friday off after the Anzac Day holiday. 

Australia celebrates Anzac Day on Thursday April 25th

"It's amazing how many people get 'sick' on a Friday after a public holiday so they can create a long weekend," CEO Stephen Cartwright said in a statement on Friday. His advice to employees who want some extra time off is to plan ahead and talk to their supervisor or manager about booking annual leave*.


In dealing with unplanned absence, it is important for organisations to establish an absenteeism policy and make all employees aware of its content. A company can also gain significant insight into their operation by examining their workforce’s attendance and absenteeism information. 

If the business is small in size they may be able to track employee absenteeism manually. For larger companies this may not be an option, therefore they need to ensure that they implement a time and attendance tracking system that can: 

• Keep an accurate count of individual employee absences 
• Tabulate all employee absenteeism totals 
• Calculate the financial impact that these absences have on the business 
• Detect patterns where absences are particularly high 
• Differentiate between various types of absences 

The Mitrefinch Time and Attendance system can report on an unlimited number of absence codes. Each code represents a type of absence such as annual leave, personal day, sick certified, sick uncertified and bereavement, amongst others.

In addition, managers can keep a check on the percentage of absenteeism by employee, site, location, department and company on a whole, and then determine if an employee is above or below a plant or department average of absenteeism – and take appropriate action. 

The Mitrefinch Time and Attendance system includes a host of other features to assist with absence management and holiday planning including Leave Slots and Self Service tools. 

Leave Slots enable you to limit the number of staff that can book leave on a particular day, ensuring you have the right staffing levels to meet customer or production demands. Web-based Self Service tools make it easy for employees to view their leave balances and book time off, while supervisors can quickly approve or deny requests. 

Continue to our website to find out more information about automated time and attendance systems and absence management. 

*Read the full article on news.com.au

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