The financial impact of employee absence is significant, yet managing it is increasingly complicated, time consuming and expensive.
Automating absence processes across the organisation help mitigate and reduce these costs.
Each time an employee in New Zealand is absent from work there is a cost involved due to lost productivity on the day, having to cover the missed shift, and the impact of not being able to accurately track various absence and leave types.
The more employees an organisation has, the higher the costs.
“The Aberdeen Group found that organisations not actively managing absence are subject to several overlapping costs," says Leslie Tarnacki, VP and GM, WorkForce Software Company.
"While HR managers spend approximately two hours per week on absence-related tasks, line managers spend almost as much time on tasks such as finding last-minute replacement workers and communicating with HR about employees taking time off.
“The same study showed that some organisations call in temporary workers and some simply accept that the work won’t get done.
"The majority, however, rely on existing staff or supervisors to provide coverage, which can result in unplanned overtime costs.”
Tarnacki says top-performing organisations across New Zealand are integrating absence management tools to relieve the financial and emotional burden of handling short- and long-term employee absences, identifying four key reasons to automate absence management:
1. Reduced manual processes
"An automated system provides a clear, documented channel for handling absence requests," Tarnacki adds.
"It can recognise patterns in absences, alerting the right people at the right time when occasional absences become more frequent.