Life can get in the way sometimes. And, like anyone, employees need time off to go to doctor’s appointments or support a loved one. In 2019, the U.S. Department of Labor estimated that as high as 4 percent of an employer’s workforce was absent on any given day. Annually, this cost employers in the U.S. roughly $1,685 per employee per year. Employees play a vital role in a company’s success and growth, and absences can become a setback for your company if not managed properly. Your employee absenteeism rate is an important statistic to understand.
Trends reporting and real-time management allow you to create dynamic scheduling protocols, design custom lookups, and secure employee records. In addition, AI-powered HR call-out lines create easy communication between employees and leadership. This helps to minimize employee absenteeism and the extremely cumbersome task of manual absence tracking. Understanding your employee absenteeism rate allows you to track programs and understand absence trends at your company.
Employee absenteeism is when employees are absent from work.
Check out this article to learn more about how to overcome employee absenteeism.
What is the employee absenteeism rate?
The employee absenteeism rate is a simple formula that can help you understand the ratio of days missed at work, by an employee. When calculating, you usually define a time frame like one month, quarter, or year.
With this formula, you can determine the percentage of days an employee has missed. Before you can calculate your employee absenteeism rate, you have to answer two essential questions:
- Will you be looking at monthly, quarterly, or annual absenteeism rates? Or, all three?
This is important because it will help you understand the scope of time you need to gather data on before you can begin calculating rates. - Are you currently recording excused and unexcused absences?
If not, you will need to start now. To truly calculate your employee absenteeism rates, you need data on how your employees take unexcused absences.
Now, let’s dive into the formula for employee absenteeism!
Employee absenteeism formula
# of unexcused absences
____________________________ X 100 = % of absenteeism
total period (month, quarter, year)
In this formula, one of the most important things is to calculate unexcused absences separate from excused absences. Yes, studies show that both of these types of absences contribute to reduced productivity. However, unexcused absences cause the most damage to your business and culture.
Here’s another formula that’s commonly used to calculate employee absenteeism rates:
(average no. of employees x missed workdays)
Absenteeism rate = ________________________________________
(average no. of employees x total workdays)
Now that you can calculate employee absenteeism, how can you use the data to initiate positive change across your organization?
How to solve for employee absenteeism:
Introduce an absence tracking system.
Finding a partner like Call Experts will help you maintain a scalable system that monitors employee attendance and reasons for call-outs. And, Call Experts has the capacity to report everything back to management instantly. Plus, you can send mass SMS or email communications when required. You can take your business to a new level with simplified scripting, customized contact center solutions, and actionable reporting. Learn more here.
Be clear about your expectations.
If you begin collecting absenteeism data and calculating absenteeism rates, be clear with your expectations. As an employer, clearly dictate attendance expectations to your employees and then hold them accountable. Build systems, monitor them, and make sure they scale how your business needs!
Calculate often, and continue comparing.
Once you have begun tracking the data and calculating your absenteeism rate, it will be helpful to start looking at comparisons regularly. Whether it’s month over month, week over week, or day over day, these comparisons will help you identify trends. And, they will also help define if programs are working. If not, you can make any needed adjustments to your internal systems.
Change your business policies with the data.
Sometimes, the protocols require adjustments as the previous plans might not be as effective as initially considered. Once you calculate the absenteeism rate, you can form new strategies to help your employees and business succeed!
- Are you using an automated call-out line so your employees can easily call-out? Can your team easily track the data?
- Do you need to introduce an incentive program?
- How can you encourage employees to report absences?
At Call Experts, we implement automated systems to make it easy for your employees to call-out. We are committed to effective communication that creates real-time access to trends and reporting so managers and executives can track and understand meaningful reports on the data. Our tools keep you informed and educated to make impactful decisions for your organization.
Want to learn more? Please email us!
