3 Ways to Understand Employee Absence That HR Leaders Should Know

In this article, Steve Arnold, CEO of e-days explores how, with a proper absence reporting system, business owners and HR leaders can gain stronger intelligence across the workforce with reports that can quickly create a picture for an individual employee, or even further by the team, location, country or office.

In business, data is only as strong as those who analyze it. It’s all very well having the latest flash system in place to keep tabs on your workforce, but if you as a business owner are unclear on what the resulting data means, or how you might best interpret it to bring benefit to your workers, then you’ll struggle to derive much advantage from it. When it comes to hot-button topics such as absence intelligence, this is especially pertinent. Most businesses track when their employees are off unexpectedly. Some might flag particularly noticeable trends to HR or make it part of a feedback session. But very few understand how to access insight into day-to-day absence data which can help them provide better working experience for employees and also maximize their own profitability. 

Your attendance tracker throws up that a particular employee has had four days off in one month. But do you have the full picture? What if you knew it was the same day of the week every time? That might indicate a pattern; perhaps the employee is juggling childcare on that day – you could sit down and work out a solution for both parties.

With proper absence reporting, you can quickly create a picture for an individual employee, or even further by team, location, country or office. These reports can give you clear visibility of employee absence across different areas; interpreting that data is a different story. Here are the three key ways which I’d recommend every business owner and/or HR team puts into practice, in order to gain stronger intelligence across the workforce:

Put a number on it

Two different employees may take the exact same amount of sick days across a 6 month period, but this could be for completely different reasons, and the potential consequences for your business are markedly different too. Two weeks off after a medical operation, versus consistently missing every other Tuesday – you’d be right in thinking that the long term disruption risk is very much from the second case. In this way, ‘Bradford Factor’ scoring is a useful way to act on absence data. 

The Bradford Factor supports the principle that repeat absences have a greater operational impact than the long term sick. You can calculate an employee’s Bradford Factor using the Bradford Formula, which is: S x S x D = B. ‘S’ is the total number of separate absences, ‘D’ is the total number of days’ absence and ‘B’ is the Bradford Factor score. The higher the number, the more attention you need to pay to an employee, even if their absences are in total not extreme.

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Look forward as well as backward

A trend businesses might not think about too deeply is this. Who’s going to be in trouble six months’ time?’ By this, I mean that a worker who isn’t taking any leave isn’t a good thing. It means they’re probably going to a) burn out and need a chunk of time off to recover, or b) stockpile their holiday to the end of the year and leave you with significant staffing issues. 

This is where having strong absence intelligence, through understanding and anticipating your workers’ needs down the line, can really help. If someone hasn’t had a break for six months, it’s worth raising it with them and recommending some (well deserved) holiday. You can also create a holiday report for your business that shows everyone who is on annual leave during a certain month, allowing you to easily plan for future projects. 

This also works around areas like returning to work; helping minimize the amount of time that someone you see has had a significant amount of leave needs to get back into the rhythm of your workplace is something you definitely don’t want to leave too late.

See where you can help workers help themselves

You can point employees in the right direction to help them help themselves, and by extension the business, if your data can help identify who might be at particular risk of frequent unexplained absence. In this case, doctors’ appointments and sick days are a prime example. Someone who has had very little leave in a period of six months, only to take three lots of leave in a two month period, for example, could well have had something happen in their day to day life which is causing significant disruption.

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By looking deeply into your absence data, you might see that some workers are requiring frequent time off for medical reasons. The employee’s needs come first, but you can help both parties by encouraging or making available the opportunity to work from home, take flexible hours or take phone appointments in the office. Additionally, you can actually preempt employees’ requirements; providing health-based resources via your company HR system to anyone who has an absence for their health so that they’re better prepared for the future.

Taking your absence intelligence seriously is a good opportunity to show employees that you care and at the same time maximize their productivity for the company. 

Are you taking your absence intelligence seriously? Let us know what you feel on FacebookOpens a new window , LinkedInOpens a new window , or TwitterOpens a new window .