When I was a youngster, the rule in our house was that kids had to go to school unless they could prove a fever or had thrown up in the previous several hours and were likely to again. No exceptions.
In the past, I think most workers held themselves to a similar standard. Today however, there are a growing number of life situations keeping people away from work even though they maintain a steady 98.6 and haven’t thrown up for years.
As 2008 winds down, take some time to look back at how many days you were short a worker or two and the reasons they gave for their absences. Turns out, despite what they told you, many of them weren’t sick.
According to a 2007 survey by CCH, a leading provider of human resources and employment law information, two-thirds of U.S. workers who call in sick at the last minute do so for reasons other than physical illness.
Personal illness accounts for only 34 percent of unscheduled absences from work, while the rest can be attributed to other problems including family issues (22 percent), personal needs (18 percent), entitlement mentality (13 percent) and stress (13 percent).
Whether or not people lie about being sick to take care of family issues depends more on company policy than the actual situation. But unscheduled absences are always a problem for businesses because they reduce productivity. Cutting down on the number of unscheduled absences can improve productivity for the company and improve the work environment for all employees.
What ails your sick leave policy?
Traditional sick leave policies and inflexible scheduling may put an employee in the position of having to conjure up a cold and take an entire day off when he really needed only two hours to take an elderly parent to a doctor’s appointment.
If the only way an employee can take time off is to call in at 6 a.m. sounding like they are at death’s door, then you won’t be able to go to Plan B until 6:02 a.m. It may have been easier to find a fill-in driver or reshuffle the day’s scheduled appointments if you had known several days in advance that the an employee would be taking off from 10 a.m. to 11:30 to go to an open house at their 4-year-old’s preschool. The hassle for everyone is much greater if that employee calls in sick at the last minute to attend the event; and what kind of example is he setting for the 4-year-old by lying to his employer?
Understand people’s situations
Employee retention is crucial for the success of any small business. Doing all you can to keep good employees includes understanding their situations and building their trust and respect by accommodating them whenever possible.
Workers who are part of a dual-earning family with small children, single parents with custody of children or caregivers for aging parents might be stuck calling in “sick” when really their child is sick or their elderly parent needs to go to an appointment. Then again, young singles are more likely to call in sick the Monday after a holiday weekend. You need to know who you are dealing with.
Your policy on taking time off should reflect the needs of your staff. Of course there are legal restrictions on what you can directly ask people about their personal situations when you are hiring them, but if you just spend a little time hanging out with your employees and keep your ears open, you’ll get to know a lot about them.
If you hear single-mom Sue discussing her son’s asthma and chronic allergies, it might dawn on you why she calls in sick so much during ragweed season. Bob the bow hunter, on the other hand, might be coming down with “the flu” a lot every fall. If, despite their occasional absences, Sue and Bob are talented, valued employees, maybe it’s worth exploring how they can get the time off they need without robbing the company and inconveniencing their co-workers by taking unscheduled, full days off by calling in sick.
Search for solutions
Most businesses have core hours of operations during which staff attendance is mandatory. Identify those hours for your business. Chances are they add up to only 20 or 30 hours of an employee’s weekly schedule. Use the other 10 to 20 hours to offer flexible work hours to your whole staff; not just those who are caregivers.
The key is creativity. One employee may come in two hours later than usual, but stay two hours later. Another might take off Tuesday afternoon and make up for it Saturday morning. Maybe someone takes a longer lunch break and makes up the hours later in the day. Some companies allow people to work four 10-hour days rather than five 8-hour days.
By allowing people to attend their kids’ school events, take a parent to the doctor or occasionally arrange their workday around a passionate hobby, you’ll relieve workplace stress, boost morale and increase productivity.
Remember, personal needs, entitlement mentality and stress accounted for more unscheduled absences than family issues, but if a company is more flexible in allowing workers to meet the demands on the home front, workers, in turn, are more appreciative of the company, more willing to go the extra mile for the company and less likely to take advantage of the company by taking “mental health days” at the spur of the moment.
Reduce “real” sick days
Of course, people do get sick … for real. And when they do, they should be encouraged to stay home. You can make efforts to reduce sickness among your staff by offering free or inexpensive flu shots, making a hand sanitizer accessible and encouraging its frequent use, sponsoring wellness programs and working to reduce presenteeism.
Presenteeism is when a person comes to work even though they are ill. If a worker takes a sick day every time he has to do something for an aging parent, he might feel he can’t justify any more days off and just suffer through his own, actual sick days on the job. But, as anyone who’s ever been sick knows, he won’t be doing a good job and in the process, he’ll be spreading germs and getting co-workers sick too. The result: you’ve got four people off work with the flu rather than one.
So, in addition to a flexible, revamped policy regarding employee hours, you might just want to enforce the time-honored rule on fevers and throwing up a little more strongly. Because when it came to sick days, mom really did know best.
