A T&A and Absence Management system is also beneficial for your employees’ health and wellbeing.
You may, for instance, have a salaried employee who does not get paid overtime. After implementation of the system, you see that he is working an excessive amount of time, time that was otherwise going unnoticed, and you then have the opportunity to discuss with him why this is the case.
Your employee’s workload might be too high, he might need training to increase his productivity, or he might simply be spending too much time on Facebook. Whatever the reason, you need to know what it is if you are to resolve the issue and increase the efficiency of your business.
As the CBI Healthy Returns? Absence and workplace health survey 2011 found, presenteeism (coming to work while sick and/or continuing to work even when no longer effective) is a problem rather than a boon for your company – time spent at work should be productive, and ‘[w]orkers who are “bravely soldiering on” are in fact doing neither themselves nor their employer any favours’.[1] Hours worked does not equate to hours spent productively. However, you need to assess the motives behind it – are they coming to work despite being ill because they can’t afford to take time off, or out of duty and devotion to your company? Are they working long hours regularly to clear a backlog while it is quiet, or to cover up shortcomings in their performance (or even to undertake personal activities)? Of course, the ongoing economic downturn makes staff increasingly reluctant to take time off for illness and keen to be seen doing extra, when possible downsizing and job losses are a worry for them.
[1]Healthy Returns? Absence and workplace health survey 2011, (CBI), p. 17.