Absence Management Survey by Honeydew Health

To Measure or Not to Measure (Absence) – That is the Question…

Last week the Honeydew Health / Absencehub.com team exhibited at the CIPD HR Software Show at Kensington Olympia in London. Like last year we dressed up as the Usual Suspects of poor attendance – and once again it went down a storm. One of our new activities this year was that we decided to conduct an absence management survey of visitors to our stand about how they manage absence. The results were sobering to say the least!

My persona at the HR Software Show – the Buffalo Skiver

Absence Management Survey Results

The reasoning behind the survey was to get a better understanding of how important absence management is to organisations in 2015. While it was clear that absence is a key issue for HR, Finance and Senior Management it was also obvious that not enough attention is being paid to it. The key headlines of our absence management survey are as follows:

• The average cost of absence of the surveyed organisations was £848.57 – or more than 39% higher than CIPD annual absence management survey showed in 2014
• Less than half (47%) of all of the organisations surveyed had an absence recording solution in place
• 24% of all respondents had no solution in place, but claimed to know what their absence levels were. This was the equivalent of 51% of all respondents whose organisations have no absence recording
• Just under 13% knew what absence was costing their organisations
• Less than 57% of the respondents knew what current absence levels were – and among those who knew a total of more than 55% had between 3 – 5% or more than 5% absence. CIPD’s surveyed average in 2014 was 2.2%

What Does the Absence Management Survey (Really) Tell Us?

Naturally the question becomes what can we really learn from a survey, which puts respondents on the spot about a very specific topic? Not a lot you might say, but we beg to differ.

One of the key issues there always seems to be with the larger surveys like the annual one by the CIPD is that the HR teams of larger organisations are too busy firefighting to actually fill in a survey. Combined with, what is now known to be the case, the fact that absence problems are larger in large organisations than in small ones it is a fair assessment to say that our numbers for both actual cost per employee and the actual absence levels seem to be a more realistic indication of the state of absence in 2015. Chiefly because the respondents from larger organisations took part in our survey (57% of respondents represented employers with more than 250 employees – 14% higher than the CIPD survey’s total).

Another key issue that we uncovered was how companies without a recording solution in place were sure of what their absence levels were. This seems to us to be the work of either psychics or, at the least, wishful thinking, and, if anything, these results are likely to have been understated. This, once again, supports the hypothesis that the CIPD’s numbers are too low. If we were to extrapolate the data from the average cost per employee and also add 39% to the total absence levels of 2.2% (making it 3.1%) this would probably be a fairer assessment.

The third major issue we found was that many organisations might be recording absence, but they aren’t actually managing it! Solutions such as using spreadsheets, time and attendance software or generic HR systems seem to be the order of the day for many organisations – with less than 10% of the respondents having an absence management system in place. The “problem” with this is that the systems, at best, record data which is not being used – and by the time it reaches the relevant people it is already out of date. An absence management solution is about using real-time data to proactively work with your employees to manage absence, improve their short and long-term health, and increase their overall productivity. This is not something a spreadsheet or an add-on to your payroll system can do.

However, in the end what is probably the most shocking thing is that employers don’t seem to know how much sickness absence is costing them. According to the annual sickness absence survey undertaken by Jelf Employee Benefits of EEF’s manufacturing company members, less than one fifth (18%) even measure the cost of sickness absence. Considering that this is the second most expensive employee cost after salaries this is rather surprising. I think it’s also fair to say that it means there is room for improvement.

We know that the methodology of our absence management survey is open to questioning, but the results were still quite revealing in terms of how high absence management really is on the agenda in organisations. This is truly one of the areas of business where you can both make massive savings and boost productivity – without the morale killing exercise of making people redundant. If more companies focused on trying to identify these types of savings (and, at the same time, boost British productivity, which is lagging behind both France and Germany) this would also have a positive societal impact because more people are kept in work. But enough of that for now. I shall descend from my high horse and move along to offer gifts to all!

Free Tools to Improve Your Absence Management

There are a number of tools, which we have developed to help you identify what absence is really costing you – and find out whether (or how) you could be managing absence better.

The first tool is our new online absence calculator. It only takes a couple of minutes to fill in the data and you will get the results immediately – including the likely cost savings you could make by proactively managing sickness absence.

The other tool is a very simple ‘acid test’ with a few questions to ask yourself about how you’re managing absence in your organisation. The likelihood is that it will quickly help you identify areas for improvement.

Finally, we would also like to offer you a free download of our eBook “Truth or Myth”, which can help you identify some of the common mistakes in absence management.

If nothing else, I hope that our little thought provoking (and tongue-in-cheek) absence management survey has given you inspiration to see how your organisation can improve its absence management. If you would like to get more inspiration from us, be sure to sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter.