Our experienced and dedicated team share some tips on absence management.

If you have any other questions or you require other HR support, please contact us on 0333 600 6100.

Effective absence management comes from measuring and monitoring time off work, particularly those unplanned, short-term absences that cause the most disruption and cost to your business. Identifying trends and underlying causes are key elements of the process that can help to ensure the most effective and appropriate intervention is taken.

With the right initiatives and approach, backed up by effective policies and procedures, your employees can feel supported if they have a genuine sickness absence, keeping the focus more on attendance than absence. In taking consistent and firm action on the occasions when your absence policies are exploited, it’s clear to everyone that such abuse will not be tolerated.

One of the effective methods in your absence management toolbox is the return to work interview. We can guide you on how best to prepare and conduct that interview, to get the most out of the process.

We are often asked whether the business is bound to implement the advice on the Statement for Fitness to Work if the Doctor has suggested a change to the working arrangements to allow the employee to come back to work. The simple answer is that this is an advisory note so, whilst your aim will be to get your employee back to their normal duties, if the suggested change doesn’t work for your business you do not have to do it. What we would advise you to do is discuss this with your employee, so they are clear on the reasons and how this impacts their pay.

We can help you with deal with these or any other situations or questions you may have about sick leave and sick pay.

Here are some of the effective interventions and measures we can assist you with to manage your staff absences:

• Having sound absence policies in place, relevant to your business
• Understanding your employees’ rights to take leave
• Record-keeping and the use of monitoring and trigger systems to effectively review attendance
• Return-to-work interviews
• Using your disciplinary procedures in the event of persistent lateness or unacceptable absences levels
• Awareness of disability discrimination and understanding how to avoid discrimination issues when managing absences
• Legislation affecting absence management, such as requesting access to medical records and Data Protection laws.