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Contributed by: Admin 2

Policies & Procedures to Keep the Work Going: Managing Unscheduled Employee Absence at Customer Facility

By Ryan Thomson, Regional Sales Executive

It is understandable for employers to wish for no issues with employee attendance but in order to maintain realistic expectations, they do anticipate teams to miss work for certain number of days each year. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2019 had an absence rate of 2.8 percent, which means that 2.8 percent of the workforce missed work on regular workdays. This simply highlights the unavoidable fact that there are a number of valid reasons that lead to the absence of employees from work. A more important consideration for businesses, however, is to create strategies that reduce the impact of employee absenteeism on their operations.

For planned absenteeism, employers have the time to respond to the situation well and ensure that their work and the customers’ requirements do not suffer. On the contrary, unplanned absenteeism due to illness, injury, or any other emergency requires an immediate solution. The only way that a company can implement a spontaneous, prompt, and effective solution is when it has predetermined policies and procedures in place to deal with such situations. For example, Diversified Maintenance uses TimeMD, a useful and widely used time clock system to track employee hours on the job along with other features such as a secure internet system to allow management to access real-time data and absenteeism. The company takes pride in its ability to make sure the customer facility faces limited interruptions and setbacks while they promptly replace staff members to cover any call-in, no-show, or planned leave. Diversified Maintenance is successful with this approach because all crew members are cross trained for meeting the core cleaning and maintenance requirements at all types of facilities.

To learn more about reducing impact of absenteeism at your facility, connect with me at rthomson@diversifiedm.com.