Saturday, October 10, 2009

Employee Absenteeism : Solving The Problem

By Jamie Gibbs

To overcome the problem of employees being absent you need to look beneath the surface of it. Superficial factors like sickness, stress, car breakdowns and lack of daycare tend to keep away from work just those people who are not very motivated to be there anyway.

The first part of the solution is to train |managers on the building of trusting relationships with employees so as to increase the likelihood of open communication. Then it is a matter of holding regular individual meetings to gain an understanding of how employees regard their jobs and what their motivation is. Such attention alone will create a good level of loyalty from them.

Then, managers need to develop methods to make employees feel more committed. This can be achieved by the delegation of more responsibility, rotating tasks between employees, seeking their input and ideas and regularly praising their efforts. This must be done at regular individual and team meetings. Ad hoc attention will too easily drift into never.

Simple punishments are not likely to work because employees normally find a way around them. Even if they might seem to work in some cases, employees coerced to attend work are mentally absent whilst there. It is a lose-lose strategy because such measures produces a negative environment which can make the workplace seem like a prison, thus further motivating them to seek ways of escaping.

For maximum results, focus should be given where there is the greatest likelihood of a positive return on time and effort. Employees should therefore be assigned to one of three categories, those who have legitimate reasons, long standing problem employees and those who responded best to other changes implemented in the past.

Employees showing themselves to be most responsive, after some initial effort, need to be given most attention. As for those who do not respond at all, unless they are considered to be performing an essential role, there may be no alternative but to recruit replacements who are more interested in making a commitment.

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