Sickness & Absence

Sickness absence is often seen as a difficult subject because ‘ownership' can be spread between line management, human resources and occupational health. Further, it rarely appears as a direct cost in either formal or management accounts. To complicate matters further ‘outside agencies' such as GPs also can appear to tie the hands of employers.

Short Term and Long Term Sickness Absence

Sickness absence management can be split into two categories - short-term and long-term. Various commentators will argue as to when one stops and the other starts but the following chart shows, typically, high incidence of absence in the first week with a relatively low number of total days taken but low incidence at 10+ days but with a very high number of total days taken. Peter Marno has seen these figures replicated in a number of large companies and suggests that it is critical, therfore, to actively manage long term cases.

Systems and Services

There are a number of systems and services available to help manage this subject:

If in-house software is used it is vital that it captures ALL instances of absence along with the causes. Further, ideally, it will ensure cases do not become long-term through inactivity or ignorance.

External services range from nurse-led helpdesks to automatic recording devices. The major advantages of these systems are that cases remain open and, therefore manageable, until a resolution is reached and that good management information is provided.

The challenge for most organisations is to ensure that good data is available from which good man management and cost decisions can be made.