Absence Management | Meaning and Definition

What is Absence management?

Absence Management refers to building and implementing strategies to reduce employee absenteeism, prevent workforce disarray, and thus, enhance employee productivity. As some prefer to call “attendance management,” absenteeism management intends to discipline employees for taking unnecessary or questionable leaves and support those who miss work owing to injury, sickness, or other unfortunate causes.

Having an efficient absence management system facilitates companies to monitor the absence of an employee through work hours when he/ she is away due to vacation, personal reasons, or calamity. Creating such a database that holds the record of employees who are absent, about to go on vacation, or take leave for any reason, helps the company restructure working in the area of the absent employee. This could be done either by getting a replacement or dishing out responsibilities to other colleagues in the same domain.

Understanding Absence Management policies

Every company creates an absence policy to handle employee absences to avoid workforce disruption and other losses. The policies should be disclosed to employees as they enter the company for the first time. They should be apprised of their duties, rules, and obligations in the organization they would work.

Furthermore, the absence management policy also informs the fresh employee of the procedure they can follow and who they need to contact for getting sickness off, holidays, or other leaves.

Here are some Absence Management policies companies can adopt:

–  Stating what the enterprise covers when an employee takes leave due to sickness, such as medical insurance, legal minimum wage, etc.

–  Mentioning employee’s entitlement to specific vacation days.

–  Absence due to demise or serious health of close kin.

Besides acquainting the employee with the above, a company should also inform them of the actions they need to consider when they come back to work. For instance, employees must know things like a work plan or a person responsible for assisting them in catching up with the missed work. Absence Management policies also include actions implemented when an employee takes unfair leave from work.