7 Ways To Effectively Reduce Absenteeism in the Workplace

What is absenteeism?

Absenteeism is a term used when an employee is regularly and habitually absent from work. This is different from paid leave or where the employee has been granted the time off. Absenteeism is often recognised when those recurring absences have no clear reason.

Clearly, staff will be absent or sick from time to time but excessive absenteeism can be expensive for organisations and impact wider productivity levels, engagement and wellbeing.

There could be many reasons for absenteeism problems; such as a specific employee having personal challenges, mental health issues or struggling with workload for example. However, it may be more representative of a systemic problem with absenteeism across a department or organisation.

What is the cost of absenteeism in the workplace?

The most recent statistics found that absenteeism cost UK employers £14bn in 2020 – and these figures have been increasing year on year.

It’s important to acknowledge that though the cost of absenteeism is high, a CIPD Health and Wellbeing at Work survey found that presenteeism and leaveism had also become widespread during the pandemic. A Deloitte report for example found that whilst sickness absence numbers may have fallen, more than half of all UK employees admitted to continuing to work when ill instead of taking time off.

Therefore, it’s important to point out that, in fact, organisations with very low rates of absenteeism may have wider cultural problems with the other isms, presenteeism and leaveism, instead.

The financial impacts of absenteeism are numerous but will be slightly different for organisations with salaried staff compared with those that pay hourly wages. Organisations will either incur costs through continuing to pack sick leave for the absent salaried employee, or incurring direct costs through the requirement to hire temporary staff or outsource work that is time-dependent.

Other effects of absenteeism

Aside from the financial costs of absenteeism, the impact can be felt in other tangible and intangible ways, such as:

• Reduction in productivity: not just in terms of the impact of the work that the employee themselves would otherwise be doing, but also the productivity impact on a team or department who may have to complete additional work themselves. This can also affect the quality of work done through understaffing or lead to the need to stop certain jobs if they cannot be completed without the missing employee.
• Increased administration: it can be incredibly time-consuming for HR and line managers to monitor and address challenges of absenteeism and find ways to replace a missing employee and take managers away from other business tasks.
• Health and safety challenges: the safety of other staff members may be threatened if the absent employee is a key part of a team, such as in construction or a warehousing environment.
• Lack of engagement and poor work quality: depending on the underlying causes of absenteeism – personal challenges with mental health for example - it’s likely that an employee who is regularly absent is going to be less engaged when they are in work, making them potentially less efficient and more likely to make mistakes. This can cause challenges for your quality control and risk harming your brand, customer relationships and reputation.
• Problems with talent attraction and retention: an organisation with a more endemic problem with absenteeism due to negative working environments and higher levels of stress and poor wellbeing will likely also have problems retaining their people. This can trickle out into the wider job market and affect your employer brand, deterring new talent from applying.
• Longer term absences: if the underlying causes of absenteeism are not addressed, organisations risk having to deal with long term sickness absences.

What are the main causes of absenteeism?

There are many reasons people miss work and the underlying causes of habitual absences can be difficult for managers to pinpoint. Organisations with absenteeism problems may also have cultural challenges with communication, wellbeing or with line-manager skills and competencies to appropriately support and make adjustments for employees.

We do know however, that according to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), 55% of all working days are lost are due to work-related ill health.

Some of the most common causes of absenteeism are:

• Minor illness (includes colds, flu, stomach upsets and headaches): Minor illness is still the most common reason for absences. Important to note however, that general sickness issues are the reasons given for most absences, not necessarily the genuine cause for them.
• Stress, burnout and mental health: HSE statistics revealed that half of all workers suffering from work-related ill health are dealing with stress, anxiety or depression, but a huge 90% will never cite these as reasons for their absence. This poses a challenge for accurately recording true reasons for absenteeism.

CIPD and Simply Health research concluded that the main risks to employee health are now psychological, with mental ill-health and stress being two of the top three causes of absenteeism and long-term absences from work. In fact, 73% of employees experiencing mental ill-health during the pandemic attributed their work life as being at least partly responsible. In addition, 70% of people who suffer from mental health issues said that their depression or anxiety can affect their work with nearly half (47.7%) actually dreading going to work.

Negative working cultures can contribute towards excessive absenteeism too; unrealistic workloads, poor working environments, lack of recognition and inadequate support for wellbeing could all be part of a wider problem of absenteeism.

• Musculoskeletal injuries: Injuries and back pain follow stress as a top reason for work-related illnesses and days lost to absence. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this kind of illness is more typical in industries that involve manual work but have increased in desk-based workers since homeworking driven by the pandemic.
• Bullying and harassment: avoiding negative work environments can be a reason for many to call in sick.
• Long term medical conditions: this could be related to physical or mental health and some employees may not want to speak to their manager to disclose these things.
• Caring responsibilities: without appropriate flexible working allowances, an employee may be regularly absent due to having to look after an elderly relative or dependent child, or when their normal arrangements fall through.
• Bereavement: having time off to deal with a loss is common and most organisations offer a set time of paid bereavement leave. However, there’s no set timescale on grief and employees dealing with the death of a loved one are likely going to feel the effects for a long-time.
• Lack of inclusion of the diverse workforce: though you may have a diverse workforce in terms of representation, failure to properly support inclusion can lead to stress, anxiety and subsequent absenteeism.
• Lack of meaningful work and disengagement: employees that don’t feel valued in their role can become disengaged and unproductive and more likely to choose simply not to work at all. This can also happen if they feel their work is not understood, acknowledged or appreciated by their team, manager or organisation.

7 ways to reduce absenteeism in the workplace 

1. Review your absence management strategy

An effective absence management strategy will feature all of the points in this section, setting out clear ways absenteeism will be measured and monitored in the context of absence across your organisation. This could include utilising tools such as The Bradford Factor as a way to calculate problems of absenteeism and monitor excessive absenteeism in the workplace. Once problems have been flagged, you can begin to address them more effectively.

Different types of absences will require a different HR response. So if a certain kind of leave is more common in your workforce, tailor your absence management strategy to that challenge.

2. Support and improve employee mental health and wellbeing in the workplace

Introducing or reviewing your wellbeing strategy and employee assistance programme (EAP) can contributes towards reducing absenteeism.

Deloitte research found that for every £1 spent on supporting employees’ mental health, employers would get £5 back on their investment in reductions in presenteeism, absenteeism and staff turnover.

Though 4 in 5 organisations think focussing on wellbeing will be key to their success, CIPD reported that half still didn’t have a standalone wellbeing strategy, and those that did had an implementation gap. Other research found that 76% of people believed their company should be doing more to protect the mental health of their workforce.

Measures like introducing financial wellbeing support; flexible working; recognition tools; employee feedback surveys; access to counselling and workplace wellbeing training for staff and line-managers can all help support the mental health of your employees and avoid work-related stress, burnout and depression playing a part in endemic absenteeism problems.

The Vitality Health at Work study reported that 75% of organisations said early interventions and initiatives to support wellbeing had had a positive impact on their people’s health and Deloitte found that investing in pre-emptive wellbeing interventions achieved higher returns than those that were brought in later when individuals were already struggling.

3. Carry out return-to-work interviews

Coming back to work even after a day or two off can be daunting for employees; they may have missed changes which can make it harder for them to pick up where they left off, but they may also be experiencing personal challenges which affect their ability to do so.

A good return-to-work interview after any period of absence could help to reduce the likelihood of absenteeism problems occurring in the first place. The interview should create an environment where the employee feels able to talk about any issues they may be having, either personal or in the workplace.

This process demonstrates that your organisation cares for and invests in the overall wellbeing of its people, whilst attempting to understand and address the underlying causes of absences. Understanding more about the nature of the absence can help line managers to put in place the arrangements for the individual to return to work effectively. For example, if the reason is stress-related, you’ll need to work out what the business can do to alleviate pressure on the employee. For example, if their workload is too much, distribute work amongst their team or hire someone to provide additional support.

4. Address health and safety

If you’re able to see that your organisation has absenteeism problems related to back pain or injuries, there are a few things to ask yourself.

Firstly, do employees have access to the right equipment? Staff who have back problems and are desk-based should have tools to support their posture. Ergonomic keyboards, footstools and specially adapted chairs can all improve these employees' health. This has been a growing problem with an increasing number of employee working from home or desk sharing.

Secondly, do you have ways of reviewing your employees’ working spaces as these continue to change? And do you have the budget to put in place appropriate measures to support them?

Lastly, frontline or on-site employees that are expected to do a lot of heavy lifting or machine work should have to complete mandatory health and safety compliance and refresher training in these areas.

5. Explore more flexible working options where possible

If you’ve identified reasons for employee absenteeism such as challenges with childcare or other caring responsibilities and other inclusion challenges, better flexible working policies may help you reduce absenteeism.

Research by Catalyst found that offering flexible working increased work engagement by 75% and organisational commitment by 68%. It even leads to a decrease in burnout by over a quarter (26%). Flexible working has also been seen to improve employee retention and increase productivity.

The growth in the wider use of communication technology in our everyday working lives since the pandemic hit has provided alternative options for people to continue to work around personal issues, rather than feeling they have no choice but to call in sick.

6. Support for inclusion

Employees who do not feel properly included are likely to feel more anxious and stressed, leading to problems with absenteeism. As an example, whilst you may have a board which may be diversely representative in terms of the number of women present, unless your organisation is fully inclusive, you may have issues with sexism, unconscious bias and childcare challenges that can lead an employee to feel excluded. Inclusivity should take into account the individual needs of each employee to fully contribute to their workplace.

7. Utilise absence management software

All of the above can be done in a more clear and visible way with integrated HR software.

The use of tools and technology to spot patterns in employee absence can help arm managers with the information needed to better understand absenteeism and monitor the disruption to their organisation.

To gain an overview of the causes of absenteeism, you could use Bradford Factor scoring or other methods in your HR system to trigger alerts to HR and line managers with any potential problems. they haven’t previously felt able to speak about.

It's important to have a way for line managers to categorise absences when they log it in your absence management software. By assigning a category to people’s time off, you’ll have the detail you need to segment your absence data by type.

This provides useful insights for your HR team that, when acted upon, reduce the cost of absenteeism as well as spot issues particular to your staff and adapt your strategy to their needs. This data can also help HR managers to develop and improve absence management policies and programmes, thus creating a tailored approach that's right for your organisation.

Learn more about absence management and how to do it well.