Taking Control of Employee Absenteeism: An Entrepreneur Shares His Best Tips

Despite all your best-laid plans as an employer, your employees won't show up to work every day. Employees get sick, they need time to take care of their kids and families, and personal emergencies never happen at convenient times. Missing work is, in fact, a normal part of work.

However, employees missing work becomes abnormal when it’s frequent and widespread. In these instances, employee absenteeism in the workplace can be a serious sign that employees are unhappy, unsatisfied, distracted, or disengaged. For employers, spotting the signs of sweeping employee absenteeism is important as it can lead to missed deadlines, lost workers, decreased productivity, poor customer service, and lost revenue. The bottom line is, every day an employee misses work, it costs your business time and money.

A study by PricewaterhouseCoopers found that U.S. employees miss around 4.9 days of work per year. That might not seem like a lot, but remember, that’s an average across all industries. What's normal and abnormal could be very different for the type of work you’re doing. However, regardless of your industry, missed days can severely impact productivity when all your employees take unexpected leave.

Here are five ways to limit employee absenteeism:

1. Work-life integration

In my 30 years of experience running my own business, which now employs nearly 400 employees, I’ve noticed that the No. 1 reason for employee absenteeism is a lack of work-life balance, or as I like to call it, work-life integration.

I’m sensitive to this subject because it’s one of the main reasons I started my own business. I wanted to live more of my life on my terms, doing things I cared about. If work-life integration is important to me, then I know it’s got to be important to my employees. Thus, my company allows employees to work from home, enjoy flexible work hours, and use generous PTO starting in the first year. These benefits allow my employees to have the freedom to tend to real-life issues from the start of their careers all the way to the end of their careers. Plus it helps with employee recruiting and retention.

Another excellent way to manage work-life balance is to make the culture of your workplace feel less like work. If you have a quality work environment with amenities that employees enjoy, it makes their jobs easier and frustration free. Think of how much time your employees are going to spend at your worksite. In some cases, employees spend more time with coworkers than with their families! If that’s the case, shouldn’t the worksite be amazing?

2. Spot the patterns

If your employees are absent closer to holidays or certain stretches during the summer (like the start of baseball season), then there may be a clear correlation between why they’re not at work and what’s going on outside your business.

Or, let’s say you notice one employee is absent from work the last Friday of every month. You talk to him or her and find out that the employee is missing work to pick up a child. You could then schedule that employee so he or she does not have to be in the office on the last Friday of the month. You can also allow for the employee to make up the missed hours on a different day.

It’s important to understand that not all employees will make their work-life integration needs clear when they interview for the job. They may not express their scheduling needs, thinking that if they are open about them, they won't get the job. Later on, they may choose to be absent instead of addressing new or changing needs with management. This reluctance to share time-off needs could be a result of the culture you’ve fostered in your company or the value you’ve placed on not missing work.

It’s important that you, as the employer, maintain an open dialogue with employees about their changing work time needs. This allows you to help them, and enables you to prepare for scheduled needs for coverage.

Your employees can take advantage of Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) leave for personal or family medical care reasons. For example, if an employee needs certain days off every month for recurring medical treatments, he or she would be able to use FMLA leave. This kind of leave comes with some strings attached, so make sure you are compliant with FMLA rules.

3. Have an attendance policy

If you haven’t done so yet, consider creating a formal small business attendance policy. This way you have an established guide for how time off should be scheduled. In your attendance policy, you should clearly lay out any disciplinary policies and procedures for chronic absenteeism. This lets your employees know in advance what is at stake if they decide to miss a lot of work. Your attendance policy also motivates your employees to keep you aware of their changing work needs.  

4. Allow sick and personal days

Many states DO NOT legally require companies to offer sick and personal days for their employees. However, some states have adopted mandatory sick-time laws. While sick time and personal days don’t prevent absenteeism, they do limit the amount of time that employees can take an excused absence.

5. Track employees with a timekeeping system

If you’re not tracking your time and attendance, it will be difficult for you to create policy on the subject. Fortunately, there are many easy ways to implement time and attendance tracking. You can use a time punch, time and attendance software, or a spreadsheet for employees to record how many hours they worked. No matter what you choose, make sure it’s easy to track the time off employees have used.

Finally, keep your time and attendance records in a secure file. This is crucial to ensure you maintain accurate payroll files should any time- or attendance-related questions arise.