Do call centres enhance absence management?

Absence management is a 24 hour job. If your employees need to call in sick, restricting the time in which they can notify you just isn’t realistic. But on the other hand, expecting managers to be on call for absence 24 hours a day isn’t realistic either. The solution is call centres, but the question is: Do call centres enhance absence management? Or should this be a management responsibility only?

Many organisations in the UK now operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with a myriad of different shift patterns and line managers. Not knowing who your line manager is for each shift and the variety of possible contact numbers can make calling in sick quite a lengthy and stressful process. This is exactly why Honeydew Health enlist the help of a call centre.

Using a call centre, employees have one number they need to call, the number can be called 24/7 and an alert goes out automatically to all managers needed. The very fact that absence is easier to report, makes employees are up to 30% more likely (In our experience) to report their absence, and in a more timely manner.

Call centres also bring an impartial voice to the absence management process. It was recently reported by AXA PPP that 46% of employees feel nervous about calling their boss to report absent, even when they are genuinely sick. This kind of statistic is a symptom of a larger issue – a management issue to be precise. Employees should not feel nervous about reporting genuine absence and management should not express disappointment on the matter or try to convince employees to come in to work when sick. However, a usual response to this type of discussion on HR forums is that aggressive absence management procedures should be fought against and managers simply have to learn to be less forceful, or accept that they are not good managers.

The employees of our clients have always expressed a positive response about calling a call centre. They are confident that all the correct questions will be asked and they are able to full explain their absence with no interruptions or feelings of guilt. This leads us to our next point: genuine absence vs. sickies.

There are a number of reasons employees phone in sick and the majority of these absence are likely to be genuine, however life is never predictable. Many people, at some point in their lives will need short notice time off work for personal tasks which would not normally be allowed – so they lie, using sickness absence as the excuse. The same may happen if an employee has an absence cause they would rather not share, such as the classic sickness and diarrhoea. If there is an impartial voice at the end of the phone, employees are up to 40% less likely to report an incorrect absence cause.

This honestly not only leads to far more accurate absence data, but it also enhances the effects of Occupational Health and makes it far more valuable.

If you have strong opinions on the use of call centres for absence management, we would love to hear them! Our Linkedin Group discussion on this very topic needs some new opinions, so come and debate with us!

To read the full AXA PPP article, click here.