5 Common Mistakes When Managing Employee Absence

This may seem a strange first mistake for a blog post about managing absence, but one of the most common mistakes we see is not having routine conversations about absence.

Oftentimes, we see managers who avoid managing absence. When the employee returns to work, the situation “has been resolved” so there’s no need to investigate further.

This can lead to a culture of absence in the workplace.

How to ensure you manage employee absence…

Instigating ‘return to work’ interviews for all periods of absence of over, say, two days is a good way of developing a culture where employees know that you will want to check in with them when they return from a period of absence. 

There are many reasons to do return to work interviews. 

• A well-structured conversation will help you ensure that there is nothing going on in the workplace that is contributing to absence. If there is, you’ll know before the issues start to escalate. 
• Similarly, if something is going on in someone’s personal life, a return to work interview will give them the opportunity to speak up about it. You can then take appropriate action to support the individual.

This can be a particular challenge when an individual is off for an extended period.  When someone is off on long-term sick leave (think over two weeks), they are likely quite seriously unwell. The individual should be focusing on their recovery. 

However, an employee not hearing from their workplace when they are off for an extended period or only receiving workplace news second-hand via colleagues can be very stressful.

It’s important to ensure that people who are on long-term sick leave do not end up feeling isolated.  It’s also worth remembering that some long-term health conditions may class as a disability. For this reason, it’s very important to ensure that individuals do not suffer any detriment due to their absence.

Managing Communications with Employees…

If someone is off for an extended period, ask them what type and frequency of communication they would like (as soon as they are well enough to engage of course). 

• Maybe confirm that you’ll check in with them via text on a weekly basis. 
• Or confirm that you’ll do a welfare call with them once a month. 

Work with the individual to understand what would work for them. 

Whatever your approach is to managing employee absence, it’s important that you are consistent. 

Many organisations have discretionary company sick pay schemes where management decides whether an individual receives their full salary or is put onto SSP. 

Paying one individual full pay for absence whilst immediately putting another onto SSP is likely to cause discontent in the workforce. It could also result in claims of discrimination.

See our separate post on the perils of using management discretion!

Get a Clear Policy for Absence Pay

The best approach is typically to have a policy that has a consistent approach to paying for absence.

There are, of course, many valid reasons where absence payments may differ. If you operate a discretionary sick pay scheme, you should have clear parameters in your policy for making decisions around pay.  (If you need help with creating effective HR policies, we can help with that!)

There’s everyday absence, where people pick up coughs and colds or tummy bugs. Then there’s absence that relates to a chronic health condition.  The latter requires careful handling. Some chronic health conditions can be classed as a disability meaning that the employee will have some additional protections.

It is very important to understand any chronic health conditions that an employee has so that you can understand what impact they may have on attendance. 

When an individual has a health condition classified as a disability, you must make reasonable adjustments in the workplace. These reasonable adjustments should allow them to perform at the same level as someone without the disability. This does not mean that employers are expected to accept unlimited amounts of absence. However, there will be an expectation that some reasonable allowance is made for absence relating to a health condition.

Get Professional Help to Understand the Health Condition

If you are managing employee absence with an individual who has a health condition that could be classed as a disability, we strongly recommend that you seek professional guidance.  This can be a tricky area to navigate.