Attendance management – ready for the Olympics?

How many of your employees will be taking time off to watch the Olympics? How will this impact on your company’s performance?

Have you thought about attendance management this summer?

If not, it’s high time to start. Successful attendance management can result in increased productivity but overlooking employees’ wishes to follow the events may cause a hike in unplanned absence. Especially at these challenging economic times, any avoidable disruption should be managed as efficiently as possible.

Having said that, attendance management during the three weeks of the Olympics may well prove challenging and even prepared employers might find that many employees opt to take unplanned (and unauthorised) leave to follow their favourite sports. Many HR experts have already been warning about this over the past months. Among others, CIPD has issued guidance on how to best ensure employees turn up at work during the games. Similarly, David Prosser wrote in the Occupational Health Magazine about the importance of absence management this summer.

Much of the advice is common sense: try not to prevent your employees from enjoying the games and work with your staff to allow everyone to complete their duties without missing out on the key matches or events. If you can’t allow flexi hours because of the nature of the work try encouraging shift swapping. If you can’t provide TVs at the work place, maybe allowing staff to watch the online screenings would be a better option? These preparations before the Games are important but don’t forget to make sure you have good communications channels during the Olympics so that you know straight away if someone is not coming in and you can manage the situation as efficiently as possible. All in all, the best way to approach the issue is to work together towards a satisfactory solution for everyone and show employees that their contribution at work is valued.

And who knows, you might find that not only has your smart attendance management achieved an undisrupted Games period for your business but employee engagement has also increased as a result!

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