Along with revenue, employee absenteeism and presenteeism can negatively affect morale and productivity. Your team won’t perform at its best without all its members present, and if the numbers dwindle too low, your employees might feel burdened by the extra work they need to take on.

What Is Absenteeism In The Workplace?

Absenteeism is any failure to report for or remain at work as scheduled, regardless of the reason. This is usually unplanned, for example, when someone falls ill, but can also be planned, for example during a strike or wilful absence.

Reducing Absenteeism

Absenteeism can occur for a range of reasons and  it is key to identify why a worker is having high levels of absenteeism. There are benefits in reducing time off work through strategies such as wellness programs to help support mental and physical health, offering flexible hours and days to allow for life commitments, encouraging employee engagement and improving workplace morale and culture .

How To Address Absenteeism With An Employee 

If you detect a pattern of excessive absenteeism your first step is to talk to the employee to pinpoint the cause of the repeated absences so you can adopt an appropriate strategy for managing absenteeism, you may be able to resolve this informally.

A Plan For Improvement For Absenteeism 

Washing hands significantly reduces absence during the influenza season.

Keeping illnesses away will help to keep workers healthy and at work. A focus on hand hygiene and regular hand sanitising should be taken.

Exercise frequency

People who exercise regularly are less likely to be sick and also have better physical capacity to do their work with less risk of injury.

Wellness programs

Corporate wellness programs that succeed in getting people to exercise can, therefore, be effective.

Employee Assistance Program (EAP)

EAPs are aimed at the rehabilitation of workers. These intervention programs are aimed at reducing absence and improving health.

Health screening

Timely screenings for conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, and colorectal cancer can help to detect problems before they become dangerous for employees. 

Alcohol and Other Drug management/testing

Ensuring that your workforce is fit for work, and not under the influence

Creating commitment

Commitment to the organisation and alignment with the organisational goals leads to lower absenteeism. 

Rescheduling responsibilities

Asking employees to reschedule their shifts themselves is another way to decrease absence behaviour. This means that employees need to ask their colleagues to jump in and take over their shift, resulting in social pressure to show up.

Absence verification

Implementing a system where any kind of absence needs to be verified through medical documentation decreases absence. 

Flexibility and autonomy

The degree of flexibility and autonomy that individual employees have also impacts their absence behaviour.

Absence insurance

Absence insurances are another way to reduce the cost of absenteeism. 

Terminating An Employee For Excessive Absenteeism 

If there is no obvious reason for the continued absences then disciplinary action may be appropriate, however this is a formal process that must be conducted properly. The Fair Work Act protects employees while they are sick from ‘adverse action’ against them, which means that dismissing them because they are sick, or  taking negative action against them such demoting them or decreasing their pay, can result in a successful claim against the business and damages to be paid to the employee.

What Is Presenteeism In The Workplace?

‘Presenteeism’ is the term given when sick workers come to work, work at levels that are less than optimal, and risk infecting others.

Causes Of Presenteeism

The causes of presenteeism include:

  • Heightened motivation, job satisfaction and commitment to the organisation
  • Harassment, abuse, and discrimination, particularly for taking sick days
  • Large workloads, understaffing, excessive overtime, and time pressures
  • Personal financial difficulties and job insecurity
  • Severe absence management policies (including disciplinary action, limited paid sick leave, sick days requiring a note from a healthcare provider)

Tracking presenteeism is often much more difficult than tracking absenteeism, as we are not always aware when it is happening and is a lot less tangible.

A Culture Of Presenteeism 

Workplace culture can have a large effect on presenteeism, often the causes stemming from a particular culture. Properly managing presenteeism not only saves companies money in the short and longer term, it vastly contributes to employee engagement and productivity.

Presenteeism’s Impact on Mental Health

Presenteeisum can impact a person through a range of effects, including: 

  • Lost productivity
  • Reduced work team cohesion
  • Accidents
  • Job insecurity/turnover
  • Worsening health
  • Longer recovery time

Mental health can also be affected as often workers will not seek time off or treatment for mental health reasons due to work and social pressures. Individuals who have sought psychological help or undergone counselling have a higher correlation with presenteeism than absenteeism.

The True Cost Of Presenteeism 

A recent report prepared for Pathology Awareness Australia (PAA) on improving the use of health resources, quantifies the cost to the Australian economy associated with presenteeism at approximately $34 billion per annum.

Employ Health can help

Managing absenteeism and presenteeism and the challenges that come with it should be employers first focus, this is where workplace health and wellbeing programs can assist to reduce the productivity costs that absenteeism and presenteeism are imparting upon your business.

How can we help you?

Fill out the form below to get started, or call us on 1300 367 519.

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Related Services

Employ Health has a range of services that can assist in managing presenteeism and absenteeism. Don’t ignore the impact a poor psychosocial safety climate can have on the wellbeing of your employees and their productivity

Below are a few links to some of our relevant services: 

Workplace Psychosocial Risk Assessments

Mental Health Programs

Mental Health First Aid

Employ Health can offer mental health first aid sessions which equip workers with the knowledge and skill to manage and assist with mental health in the workplace. 

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Frequently Asked Questions

Presenteeism can be harder to measure, it is important to track, evaluate and understand the contributing factors. An outcome measure such as the work ability score (WAS) is a common instrument for assessing productivity loss.

The best way to reduce presenteeism within a workplace is to improve the overall health of employees and have good workplace culture regarding workloads and communication.

The formula for measuring absenteeism is relatively easy: simply take the number of unexcused absences in a given period of time, divide it by the total period, and multiply the result by 100 to get the percentage of absenteeism over a month, a year, etc.

Average absence rates in Australia are around 3.5% to 4.2%, or between 7 and 9 days per employee per year.

Chronic absenteeism is when a repeat habit has been formed for a worker to be calling in sick or not attending work. Chronic absenteeism doesn’t happen on its own and is usually accompanied by other problems such as disengagement or performance issues.

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