Becoming Who You Want To Be

To deal with the issue of employees being absent you need to look beneath the surface of it. Common excuses like stress and sickness tend to keep away from work just those people who are not particularly motivated to be there in the first place.

The first part of the solution is the training of |managers on how to build trusting relationships with employees so as to foster open communication. Then it is a matter of holding regular individual meetings to learn how workers feel about their jobs and what is important to them. Such attention alone will create a good degree of loyalty from them.

Having done that managers need to develop methods to make employees feel more committed. This can be achieved by the delegation of more responsibility, rotating tasks between employees, seeking their input and ideas and praising them regularly for desirable actions. This must take place in regular meetings, both individually and in teams. Ad hoc attention too easily drifts into not at all.

Simple punishments are not likely to be successful because employees normally find a way around them. Though they might seem to work in some cases, employees coerced to go to work are mentally absent whilst there. Either way, it is a lose-lose strategy because such an approach create a negative atmosphere which can make the workplace seem like a prison, thus even further motivating employees to avoid attending work.

For maximum results, focus should be given where there is the greatest likelihood of a good return on time and effort. Therefore, employees should be placed in 3 categories, those with legitimate reasons to be absent, long standing problem employees and those most responsive to other changes in the past.

Employees showing themselves to be most responsive at the beginning of an anti-absenteeism drive should be shown most attention. As for those who respond poorly, unless they are essential or very hard to replace, there may be no other option but to recruit replacements who are more interested in making a commitment.