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Nigel DuPree
Member - 170 posts
If, 80% of absenses are short term then may also be a good idea to explore the possibility that may just be indicative of a work related stress coping strategy.
Fight or flight in terms of coping strategies tend present in either more irasible behaviours or withdrawal respectively where individual perceives a higher degree of 'approval deprivation' in todays tick-box target driven workplace.
Absense management may just be a question of a little 'Positive Regard' and better communication or 'relationship management' applying customer care to internal market as they say.
Broken people tend to underperform by around 20% and that equalls 33 days a year so the odd naughty 'coping' day off may be a worthwhile investment in improving productivity if cultural change management isn't working.
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Noel George
Member - 14 posts
If personal targets are not agreed SMART targets it can happen that staff do not co-operate towards the overall company target. All round friction and stress is the result. The underlying problem is bad management - a self inflicted injury.
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Nigel DuPree
Member - 170 posts
Sure thing Noel, collateral damage to Human Resources usually caused through omission to care enough to have 'planned or routine maintenance' in place as one would for any other bit of production equipment .....
Good Asset Management should reduce if not eliminate ' friendly fire ' of neglect that could and will result in underperforming less realiable assets that may breaking down with increased regularity surprise, surprise.
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Craig Stuart
Member - 106 posts
Each case should be dealt with individually. Unfortunately, a lot of companies choose the 'one size fits all' option and employ punitive methods to try and reduce absence, i.e. the Bradford method.
This does nothing except lower morale further and in cases of work-related stress and other underlying problems, does not highlight or get to the root of the problem. It is merely an exercise in following the policy rather than trying to avoid it happening again, using good management techniques such as support, consideration, training, monitoring and review.
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Daniel Sweeney
Member - 23 posts
I have to agree with Craig.
A local authority in NI was coming fairly low on the 'league table' for attendance/days lost and the local govt auditors report was causing the usual moral panic among the 'angry of North Down' letter writing types (Insert Surbiton instead of North Down for clarity if unfamiliar with social/economic geography of NI!)
The Council brought in an 'attendance management policy' with the usual counting of periods of absence to trigger various mechanisms that were effectively punitive and did nothing to address the underlying causes of absence. The result was that people actually took more time off, ie a week instead of a day, as both would count as a single period of absence. improved their position no end as they moved to 2nd or 3rd place in the worst attendance record 'charts'.
I think that we need to look at our behaviours as managers and examine the way we relate to staff to see if this is causing stress and increased absence. The problem, very often, is ours as a management issue, not the staff members behaviour. Of course you will get people suffering from 'Plumbum Pendulum' but thats what a disciplinary policy is for.
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