Attendance management vs absence management – What is it all about?

At Honeydew Health we believe the difference between absence management and attendance management comes down to creating a holistic positive approach.  Managing absence means that the employee has already gone off work and problem has already occurred.  Taking into consideration the fact that an absence level of 0% is unattainable, that there will always be people off sick with colds, emergencies, etc. it is most important to focus on what can be controlled.  Companies must focus on engaging employees, reducing long term absence and supporting employees to make a timely and lasting return to work.  This is where the idea of attendance management comes in…

Our goal is to inspire healthy attendance through providing our clients with mutually reinforcing services of appropriate referrals and treatment, employee wellbeing solutions, and our cutting edge absence tracking technology.  Absence often has a negative connotation and as such becomes something that people at all levels within an organisation would prefer to ignore.  The danger with this is that a company’s culture toward employee health will quickly be interpreted as a one of indifference.  As such, it is crucial to focus on managing attendance not absence.  An employee being off work is only one example of why productivity may be lowered.  Employees may very well be present at work but not engaged due to troubles such as disagreements with colleagues, financial concerns, health problems, etc. This is exactly why companies must help create an environment where employees are supported and have the resources necessary to improve their performance.

In these challenging economic times it is crucial for companies to have both happy and hardworking employees while constantly focusing on lowering costs to the organisation.  In a recent Honeydew case study, a company of 1,000 employees with a relatively low absence level of 5%, absence is costing them £1,362,000 in the direct costs of absence alone (working time lost and cover by agency workers for 50% of absence).  According to the CIPD, indirect costs are typically at least as much as the direct costs, and in some cases more. This means that a company of this size could be loosing over £2 million a year solely related to employees being off work.

This figure doesn’t even take into account the employees mentioned above who’s productivity is lowered due to outside circumstances.  Our aim is to help companies take a positive and proactive approach to inspiring healthy attendance so that the health of the organisation stems from the health of its employees.

If you would like to know more about our approach to attendance management, check out The Absencehub or contact us for more information.