Manage absence and sickness

Having an absence and sickness policy can bring clear business benefits including:

• lower insurance costs
• higher rates of staff retention and motivation
• improved productivity, profitability and morale

You may also find that the reputation of your business is improved and that this, in turn, aids employee recruitment.

Management benefits of having an absence and sickness policy

From a management point of view, having an absence and sickness policy can help you to:

• prevent small problems from developing into larger ones
• measure and monitor employee absence - see measure and monitor absence and sickness
• identify and tackle underlying problems, such as workload demands, poor working conditions, work-life balance issues, conflict at work, or lack of adequate training/career development

Monitoring reasons for unexpected absences is just one of the ways of managing staff health and wellbeing and how you can control staff turnover.

You may find that monitoring reasons for absences makes it easier for you to identify and deal with different types of absences appropriately.

See employee absence as a capability issue and employee absence as a conduct issue.