Why absence management is important

Family and medical leave laws. The federal Family and Medical Leave Act FMLA provides eligible employees with up to 12 weeks of protected leave to care for a spouse, child or parent with a "serious health condition" or on account of the employee's own serious health condition.

Family and medical leave laws dramatically affect employers' discretion with respect to their policies and practices regarding covered absences. Nevertheless, employers still have options in how they integrate family and medical leave requirements with employer-specific ways of dealing with absences.

A detailed discussion of the FMLA and comparable state leave laws is outside the scope of this article. See Managing Family and Medical Leave. Military leave laws. Workers' compensation laws. The employer is responsible for injuries and ailments that arise out of and are in the course of employment, regardless of who actually caused the accident. There is no set limit for the amount of leave available in connection with a job-related injury. But state regulatory agencies and courts recognize that there are reasonable limits.

Note, however, that an Ohio court ruled that an employee who is receiving temporary total disability benefits may not be discharged solely for absenteeism when the absence or inability to work is directly related to a compensable injury. Employers should consult with legal counsel prior to taking adverse action against an employee who is absent due to a work-related injury or illness. Disability discrimination laws. Employers must take into account the federal Americans with Disabilities Act ADA and comparable state laws in enforcing their absence control policies.

Although regular attendance might be considered an essential job function, an employer risks violating the ADA if it fails to consider modifications to its attendance rules as a possible accommodation. For example, a strict punctuality policy that is uniformly applied does not insulate an employer from liability under the ADA when punctuality is not an essential job function.

The same analysis might apply to a no-fault attendance policy. Other equal employment opportunity laws. All federal and state equal employment opportunity laws prohibit discrimination in terms and conditions of employment, which would include the employer's policies and practices with respect to attendance. Unemployment compensation. Excessive unauthorized absences can amount to misconduct that renders a discharged employee ineligible for unemployment compensation.

If an employer wants to prove that an employee was discharged for misconduct, it must present competent, substantial evidence showing that the absences were both excessive and unauthorized.

Once the employer has proven those points, the burden shifts to the employee to show that the absences were not misconduct. Attendance Policy. Attendance Awards Policy. You may be trying to access this site from a secured browser on the server. Please enable scripts and reload this page. Toolkits Managing Employee Attendance. Reuse Permissions. Page Content. You have successfully saved this page as a bookmark.

OK My Bookmarks. Please confirm that you want to proceed with deleting bookmark. Delete Cancel. You have successfully removed bookmark. Delete canceled. Please log in as a SHRM member before saving bookmarks. OK Proceed. Your session has expired. Another best practice that also reduces how often your employee's miss work is offering flexible working hours and a robust remote work policy.

Working from home or offering flexible hours ensures they handle their personal tasks and their professional work seamlessly. That way everything you need to track and manage employee absences can be found in one place. When an organization is looking to manage, track, and plan for employee absences, it should utilize absence management software.

This includes vacation time, sick leave, and so on. Companies can use absence management systems to define what an absence looks like for their corporation while also keeping track of all requests and approvals from managers. Some reviews may have been edited for clarity. For small and medium-sized companies of up to 2, employees in need of HR software, look no further than Personio.

This application has set out to make HR processes faster, clearer, and more efficient while allowing HR managers more time to focus on employees.

With everything from recruitment processes, employee management, and payroll wrapped up in one system, customers love Personio. There are numerous challenges like a constantly growing number of employees and hierarchy levels. With its constant development of new features and API, we feel confident to tackle the challenges of the future.

In addition to that, we are running our entire recruiting with Personio. The dashboard, for example, is already pretty good for small HR teams, but if you work with several HR managers, the task list in the dashboard is not yet really mature. We are missing some features there but are hoping that they will be added soon. But with HRM, you can automate your entire payroll from employee attendance capture to leave management, payroll, and statutory compliance.

It also has easy-to-use, self-explanatory, and accurate reports according to our requirements. Replicon PSA provides companies with end-to-end time management software and services, which makes it possible for the HR team to capture, analyze, and optimize time off requests from employees.

This allows organizations to improve profitability, productivity, and employee satisfaction. Salaried and hourly workers all find Replicon PSA easy to use to log time off, vacation, expense information, and more.

This software solution can boost employee engagement, help your team find, recruit, and develop top talent, while also streamlining the onboarding process for new hires. Vantage is an all-in-one suite with all of the pieces linked together, and for that reason, it's one of Vantage's standout qualities.

It does have a test site which is a nice option, but it does require frequent updating, which is not discussed a lot. The HR side is wonderful and is very user-friendly. Recruiting is made simple, and the I-9 makes things a lot easier.

Also, an option for the end-user to manage its dashboard will improve it for the better. Some places within the tool can get quite confusing when filing tax details by not showing detailed pop-up messages. Tags: leave management HR Analytics attendance. Categories: WorkForce Management. What you will find out in this article Why is having an absence management system in place so important? What are the best strategies for absence management? A clear absence management policy 2.

Having flexitime and corporate wellness programs 3. Using absence management software What can good absence management software do?

Automate payroll to ensure zero errors regarding absences 2. Automate scheduling for easier workforce management 3. It helps to make HR work much more efficient. Why is having an absence management system in place so important? The all most common underlying causes of absenteeism are: Short-term and long-term illnesses Stress and burnout Injuries Child and elder care issues Disengagement and low workplace morale Bullying Time theft Besides the financial costs, absences cause also other issues like workload rearrangement, shift rescheduling, etc.

There are several things that are important to remember regarding absence management, besides employing a good absence tracker : 1. A clear absence management policy The first thing to do is have clear absence management policies in place.

A good absence management policy should provide the following information: When and how to inform superiors about the absence How an absence is processed from an administrative and scheduling perspective When options like flexiwork can be used to reduce absences What the pay arrangements are the in case of an absence When disciplinary measures are to be taken How to reengage in work after the end of an absence, especially a long term one How absences are recorded and how data are used For example, absence management data can be part of HR analytics that is part of a clocking app , and thus absences can be benchmarked internally among the departments or externally with the industry or competitors.

Join Many companies organize different wellness activities for their employees, such as: health educational trainings, sport events, daily yoga classes, smoothies and salad bars, healthy snacks at workplace and so on. Using absence management software The best way to manage absences is with the use of a specialized software.

Smart Clocking - Track work hours to automate and optimize payroll Learn more. Test the powerful features with a free trial. Track work hours, manage absences and generate payroll reports Learn more. Please refine your filters to display data. Gartner ReimagineHR Conference Gain access to top HR priorities for and learn how to improve trust in the future workplace to deliver greater business impacts in a remote environment.

View Conference. Top 5 Priorities for HR Leaders in Gartner surveyed more than human resources leaders across 60 countries and all major industries to identify HR trends and assess HR priorities and expected challenges for View the Report. Related Terms Conflict Management. Management by Objectives.