Here Today, Gone Tomorrow: Employee Absence And The Evaporating Workforce

A survey conducted among human resource and disability/absence managers by the Disability Management Employer Coalition in July points to an alarmingly high level of incidental or "claimless" employee absencethose unscheduled instances when an employee is away from work for one to five days.

While some incidental absences may be justified, a large number are of the three-day weekend and "mental health day" variety. Stressed by onerous work conditions, dissatisfied employees opt out of work in situations that might not have kept them home in happier times. "My boss doesnt value my ideas, my schedule at work is too rigid, Im not treated fairly Ill take a day or two of sick leave. I deserve it!"

Immensely disruptive and expensive to employers, these short, unscheduled absences wreak havoc on work schedules, increase workload for the employees who do show up and hamstring productivity. By the time a company knows about the absence, the employee is often back at work.

Incidental absences like these can account for as much as 80 percent of absence events and 33 percent of all lost workdays. Consider a light manufacturer with 16,000 employees, each of whom costs their employer $50,000 per year including benefits, etc. Incidental absence inflicts $16 million per year in direct costs.

Indeed, earlier this year a major airline revealed that unscheduled employee absence was costing it $1 million per day.

Perhaps most alarming is that American employers have no idea of the extent of the absence problem. The DMEC survey revealed a majority of employers do not know the costs of incidental absence, barely half have implemented a systematic approach to track it, and only 16 percent have the necessary tools to reduce it.

What this and other recent surveys reveal is a high level of "employee withdrawal," a negative orientation in how a person thinks, feels and behaves toward work. Due to the difficult labor market, employees are working longer and harder than ever. This is resulting in higher apparent output, but is also producing increasingly stressed employees who turn to a day off here and there to get away from an ever-larger workload. Each time they stay home they pile even more work, and stress, onto the shoulders of their co-workers who report to work.

Absence begets more absence. The ties that bind employee to company weaken. When the job market finally improves, these workers will take their talent and skill and jump to new employers.

Unchecked, the same factors that drive absence will drive stressed workers to "permanently withdraw" in the form of voluntary turnover.

The bad news is that incidental absence is a very real threat to many employers.

The good news is that it can be reduced, in turn preventing the talent flight that could undermine profitabilityand even the nascent economic recovery.

Employers should do the following to reduce employee absence:

Understand the problem.

A solution can only be devised if management knows the extent of the problem. To do that companies need to collect and collate absence-related data in a form they can readily interpret and use.

Identify root causes.

With a clear picture of the problem in hand, figure out what factors are driving workers away from the workplace.

Incidental absence is not an individual problem. It has systemic, organizational causes. Management must understand the processes and procedures that are poisoning the workplace and driving up absence across the board.

Intervene.

Implementing even basic workplace changes can dramatically reduce incidental absence and its costs. Companies that make these changes realize immediate gains in efficiency and productivity.

The U.S. economy seems to be improving. That means employees have more options. Smart companies canand shouldmake changes now not only to reduce the near-term losses incidental absence can inflict, but also to hold onto the huge investment they have made in talented employees.

Sharon Kaleta is CEO of the Disability Management Employer Coalition in Dulzura, Calif. She can be reached at chairman@dmec.org. DMEC is a nonprofit, professional association that advances the development of integrated disability, absence and productivity management processes in all absence-related employer programs. Edward L. Anderson M.D. is president of Nucleus Solutions (www.nucleusweb.com), an Arlington, Va.-based firm which helps Fortune 1000 employers identify and address the causes of absence and other drains on workplace productivity through Web-based data integration, reporting and analytical software coupled with rigorous root cause analysis and intervention services.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, October 31, 2003. Copyright 2003 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.