How to Spot Sickness Trends Without Adding to Workload

According to the CBI, the UK economy loses around Ł13.6 billion a year due to sickness absence, showing that absence is one of the greatest causes of concern for UK organisations. The public sector faces the biggest problem, with employees taking an average of 9.4 days a year off sick.

We have therefore compiled the following report to focus on the challenge to spot absence trends in a timely and effective manner, whilst providing you with some practical suggestions to tackle this increasingly cumbersome issue.

By addressing the way that sickness information is held, HR teams stand to make dramatic improvements that can not only reduce the number of sickness days company-wide, but also cut the level of unnecessary administration associated with managing ‘sickies’ – directly impacting the bottom line.

Data for data's sake...
Information overload is the scourge of the computer age, with too much data proving to be as bad as too little. Often, the information needed can be obscured by the volumes of non-relevant data surrounding it. By simply reviewing the type of information held you can often make significant steps in reducing superfluous information. Bring your team together to look at the absence data you are currently holding, focusing on which areas may be detrimental to the clarity of your information.

Am I right?
Ask yourself honestly whether the data held is accurate and up-to-date. You may even want to involve line managers by producing reports for each department that provide a quick snapshot of sickness information over the last year and then ask them to check if they tally with their own experiences of absence within the team. System bugs and apathy in reporting sickness can often lead to misleading information, through no fault of the HR team.

If incorrect data becomes highlighted don’t panic! Ask line managers if they may have had difficulties in providing you with information and check with your solutions provider that no errors exist in the system.

Problematic individuals and teams can often be highlighted through good reporting. By making key reports a monthly task, you can soon start to pick up on trends and areas for concern that will assist you in formulating strategies.

If you do not currently report on data, check with your systems provider on which reporting packages are available. Reports do not have to be complicated or even written by you, indeed many systems will have integral report writers that will enable you to easily produce meaningful absence information.

Make it flow
Whilst reporting is a vital means of making sense of the information available to you, workflow technology can revolutionise the usefulness of your sickness data by watching how your employee information changes and intelligently delivering its findings to you.

Workflow constantly monitors data for predefined scenarios and when recognised, will notify specified individuals by e-mail. For example, a person with ‘Monday morning syndrome’, or a team where absence is particularly high due to stress, can be identified without intervention, allowing you to take action within time.

The workflow tool can also be invaluable in increasing awareness of sickness absence across the organisation. Automated monthly e-mails, informing employees of the number of days taken, is a gentle but essential means of letting people know their absence is being monitored and can serve to truly drive down sickness rates.

Typically three types of scheduled e-mail can be automatically created:

Report workflows

Where information is regularly merged, for example on a weekly or daily basis and sent to predefined recipients.

These alerts have an important role to play in reducing sickness absence by providing you with information as early as possible. It also allows you to take comprehensive management information to the board without having to run reports yourself. The reports will be predefined by you so that they contain the information you want to see and are also sent at a specified time, when you are more likely to have time to review them.

Reports can tell you the average days lost and average duration of absence per employee and how this has changed since the last report. If absence levels within the company are increasing, workflow will be able to tell you if there are any similarities – are most absence increases with the young or old? Women or men? Or departments or divisions, for example.

The Bradford factor report can take the meaning of absence data even further, by looking at absences and turning them into figures that relate to the impact upon an organisation. For example, a person with many days of sickness dotted across the year will have a much higher Bradford factor than someone who has taken several consecutive days off sick.

Again, ask your systems provider which reports they would recommend, not only for workflow delivery, but also for ad hoc production.
Exception workflows

Where action is needed to rectify an omission, such as a missed appraisal or a missing doctor's certificate, or where a pattern is recognised and the relevant line manager informed instantly.

These workflows alert you to departments or locations with unusually high absence for a given period so that you are alerted to finding out what is causing the absence and can then implement preventative measures. If it's a virus there may be a case to intervene early to stop it spreading to other members of the team. High departmental absence can also indicate extreme stress levels that may require stress management sessions or a review of headcount and workload. Equally, low morale may require a more joint approach to resolution between line managers and HR.

Workflow will also e-mail you when a regular pattern is identified with an individual. For example, further investigation may be needed for an employee that is sick only on a Friday or an employee with multiple entries for one day sick attributed to 'flu'. You won't need to run a report to discover this, workflow will tell you that it's happening.
Triggered workflows

Where data such as a request for holiday leave, triggers a process.

This workflow can also tell you if line managers have outstanding information about the sickness of their employees, which may alert you to poor adherence to all absence management procedures including, for example, return to work interviews. To prevent you having to chase information and act as the middleman, workflow can automatically send e-mails out to line managers that have not completed an absence management procedure. You can also be copied into these e-mails so that over time your awareness of lax management will be increased, for appropriate action.

Triggered e-mails also help to standardise processes; it will no longer seem to line managers that completing absence documentation can be left unactioned.

Workflow is used with many HR software packages, so it is worth speaking to your own HR software provider about their workflow strategy and how you might be able to implement this technology.

It doesn't have to be expensive and can deliver benefits across the entire business – not just absence.

Increase visibility
By making absence information more visible to employees, you can easily increase awareness that sickness is being monitored and also streamline processes associated with absence.

Online portals are perhaps the best way of achieving this and can usually be smoothly integrated with existing intranet sites. When used in conjunction with workflow, eHR can prove to be an extremely powerful tool.

Workflow e-mails that are sent to line managers and employees, asking for the completion of sickness documentation, can include links to the online site where documents can either be downloaded and filled in, or completed online. Additionally employees can view online the number of days taken off sick, alongside their holiday entitlement. This reduces calls to HR regarding annual leave and subtly informs employees that days taken for sick leave are being monitored.

Raising awareness in this way can be the most effective means of slashing unnecessary sickness with very little time or effort expended by HR.

In summary
When thinking about measures to reduce absence, don’t immediately pressurise yourself by spending hours trawling through absence data looking for clues. The most important thing is to take a few steps in the right direction and gradually build up your knowledge through using the right tools and ensuring that data is accurate and up-to-date.

Once you have everything in place, information will start to take on a meaning that will allow you to identify areas of concern and take necessary action. From this strategies can be developed that further assist with cutting absence.

Do remember that tools can only go so far. Providing a stimulating and fair working environment, where employees feel valued and involved is one of the most important ways to prevent ‘sickies’.