Absence management has always been a thorny issue for HR professionals, who do all they can to alleviate the costs and issues surrounding this emotive and complex area. Traditionally this has consisted of policy work, health-related expenditure such as private medical insurance (PMI) and group income protection, and line management training.



The problems with this approach are as follows:

The policies may not themselves necessarily be of help to line managers. Phrases like: "an unacceptable level of absence will be investigated" could mean that different interpretations will emerge from different line managers.

Most HR systems can provide good reporting of who is absent, when and sometimes why, but often this information is reliant on line manager input into the system and ongoing reports and prompts from HR. How will the line manager remember that this is the fifth occasion in the last/rolling 12 months that the employee has been absent and they now need to be seen?

What about outputs? What does the line manager do to record what is agreed and said, and how do these vary across the organisation?

The new breed of outsourced sickness absence management services seems to be the answer to such challenges and can provide a prescriptive, quality-oriented and best-practice solution.

How can you manage unless you measure?

Having someone other than the line manager taking notification calls is one of the key benefits of outsourced absence services. There is an increase in accuracy of measurement, and by adopting a set of defined and possibly clinical categories, the employer can really begin to target absence types and expenditure to prevent recurrences.

There are two very different approaches to taking notification calls: those services who use nurses, and listening services. While there are pros and cons for both approaches, the use of nurses to take calls can be restrictive: many services only operate from 9 to 5, while listening services tend to be 24/7/365. If an employee is having a rough time at night, a call at night rather than in the morning may be more suitable, bringing about a better night's sleep and an earlier return. It can also help with resource planning. The cost of such clinical resources should also be borne in mind.

What should happen in a notification call?

The first thing the contact centre should ask for is core information: why is the employee absent, when will they return, is there any on-going work and what the call-back number is. The line manager can then make contact if they need to discuss any aspect of the work. The second area is to optimise the employee benefits that an employer has purchased. The two most consistently used benefits on Day 1 are the PMI/cash plan and the Employee Assistance Programme (EAP). Whilst it is likely that the employer has all employees covered under the EAP, it is rare that all will be covered under the PMI and so the IT system used by the contact centre should be able accurately to record who is and is not a member of different schemes. Once this is done, employees should then be provided with the EAP helpline or PMI claims number so they can then see what support is available to them.

How much is absence losing you?

Having an effective employee assistance programme in place is the starting point of a real opportunity to manage every absence professionally and consistently. All that needs to change is the number for employees to call. Once achieved, the employer can then accurately monitor the cost of absence and presenting issues.

An effective absence management system could pinpoint the truth about how much absence is costing your organisation.

In some cases your perceived absence rate may even increase, thanks to accurate monitoring, and removing the line manager from taking the calls - in which case a timeous intervention would be imperative. The real question is: how serious is your organisation about attendance management? If you want to operate on an efficient, consistent and best-practice basis, an efficient and outsourced absence-management service may be the key to a turnaround in staff absence levels.