This winter, the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex may not have been deluged with snow, but it has been deluged with all of the germs we associate with cold weather. The flu and colds are causing spikes in unscheduled absences, and this is severely impacting many DFW businesses. Unfortunately, this problem isn’t unique to this time of year or our region.

Nationally, 550 million days are lost due to employee absenteeism, according to Advance Systems research. This results in a $300 billion dollar cost to the economy. Forbes reports that unscheduled absenteeism costs roughly $3,600 per year for each hourly worker and $2,650 each year for each salaried employee. For individual employers, the “hard costs” include lost production, decreased quality, interrupted workflows, delayed schedules, overtime pay for other employees, and the expenses of hiring temporary replacement workers. Then there are the difficult-to-measure, but just as problematic “soft costs” of reduced morale, increased stress, and individual job dissatisfaction.

The leading causes for unplanned short-term absences are:

• Minor Illness
• Stress
• Musculoskeletal Injuries
• Family and career responsibilities
• Mental Health
• Back Pain

While these causes are legitimate, many workers game the system, making habitual false claims of injuries and illnesses. A CareerBuilder survey revealed that more than a third of workers have admitted to calling in sick when they were feeling fine. Fortunately, employers don’t have to accept high rates of absenteeism as the cost of doing business. There are effective strategies to reduce system abuses and even bring down rates of legitimate unscheduled days off. In this article, we explore four of these ideas, which should be used in conjunction to address the problem from multiple angles.

Strong Attendance Policy

Most organizations have a clearly worded policy, but many don’t go far enough in articulating key details and the importance of attendance to the business, or in regularly promoting adherence. The attendance policy should be discussed at length in the orientation process. It should be front and center in the employee handbook and on the company portal so that employees can check it anytime, at work or at home, and it should be referred to regularly in company meetings. Its ubiquitous presence serves as notice to its importance and strong enforcement.

An effective policy has specific disciplinary consequences in place for excessive short-term absences or long-term illnesses and rules for verifying illness after a specified time period. It indicates acceptable and non-acceptable patterns of absences and details how these are monitored, flagged, and addressed. For example, action can be taken if three consecutive absences each occur on Fridays or Mondays. The policy will also explain how attendance is factored into employee performance reviews.

Time and Attendance Software

Software that requires employees to actively track their time keeps managers and leadership informed of employee absences in real time, enabling more effective contingency planning. Employees know they are being held accountable for their time as they see a daily updated visual representation of their attendance record featured prominently. They also see that all of their logged hours, as well as requests for time off are seen and approved by management. This often results in more advance notice for absences and more open dialogues about health issues that could cause absences.

These systems are usually cloud-based or available on the company employee portal. Either setup enables workers to log on from home or on mobile devices and see their absence records for the year to date, compared to where they should be, given the maximum allotments. By providing visibility into problematic trends in their attendance records, these software systems work to deter abuses. The employee knows that if they can see these trends, management can see them as well. When used in conjunction with a strong and specific absence policy (viewable from this software), the deterrent factor can be especially strong.

Incentives and Rewards

These have become an increasingly popular way to bring up attendance rates. Incentives and rewards can be enacted in a variety of creative ways and they can be tested and improved over time to have the greatest possible impact. Some examples include:

• Bonuses for no absences within a six month time period
• A buy-back program for unused sick days
• Increased vacation time, or vacation expense vouchers
• Paid hours off after exemplary attendance objectives have been achieved
• Merit increases for exemplary attendance records
• Flextime available only for employees with exemplary attendance records
• Make attendance a strong factor in promotions

Employee Wellness Programs

These programs work to reduce legitimate absences and loss of productivity through common sense preventative health care and wellness incentives. They aim to help employees remain productive by improving good health behaviors; managing stress; reducing weight and improving fitness; and regulating blood pressure, cholesterol, and glucose. Each of these measures produces incremental improvements, but a comprehensive approach to wellness produces a compounded effect of better health, vitality, productivity, and longevity.

Harvard researchers examined the ROI of wellness programs as they affect absenteeism and demonstrated that for every dollar that is spent, employers can save $2.73 in the costs of absenteeism. It’s no wonder why SHRM reports that two-thirds of U.S. organizations surveyed have a wellness program in place—but one third does not.

Absenteeism has been a key subject in conferences and workshops we have attended for years, so we have had many opportunities to discuss how these methods are working for employers. What we have found consistently over time is that employers who apply each of these strategies generally see the lowest rates of absenteeism and the highest rates of employee engagement and productivity.