[Alec]

Hi, I am a consultant and I am often asked about reducing sickness rates in companies. You don’t mention if you think the staff are genuinely sick or malingering. If they are genuinely sick, sickness falls into 3 categories; 1) Short notice sickness (less than 24hrs notice), 2) notice greater than 24hrs, 3)Elective sickness, where they tell you in advance. These are handled in different ways.

Avoiding staff falling sick is a management issue, often connected to staff not drinking enough water whilst at work. Water is the body’s primary defence against bacteria and viruses. If you restrict water intake, staff lose their defence barriers and fall sick. This is both from mixing with other staff and from the food they eat. Perhaps, when they move onto the ‘floor’ they restrict their water intake and are exposed to mass infections, until they become immune. If this is a possible cause, then the staff are genuinely ill, but it is curable if managed correctly.

You don’t mention if the company has staff working shifts. If you don’t have shifts then the following is one possible cause. Most people need to take days off for personal reasons, and they can only do this in 2 ways. First method (Option A)is to have a days leave when they want a day off, the second method (Option B) is to claim to be ill for the day. If they have no leave entitlement left, they can only be ‘sick’ for the day. You need to have a mechanism in place which allows staff to take ‘their important days’ off. Whilst this is undesirable, it is a fact of life which you cannot afford to ignore. Otherwise, staff will not mention they need the day off and give you no notice of absence. This is definitely not a desirable way to run an organisation, but is the case all too frequently. There are various mechanisms that can be used to remove the problem.
If your staff work shifts, then you should have an easy shift swapping method for the staff to use to rearrange their shifts to suit their personal lives. When staff are ‘locked’ into a pattern and cannot swap shifts, they can only take days off as above. Many shift patterns are such that swapping shifts is difficult.
If you impose a limit to the number of staff that can be off at any time, and most companies have that policy, then when that limit is reached anyone wanting a days leave will know it will be refused. Thus they can only use Option B.

If all this sounds difficult to manage and could lead to staff chaos, it isn’t. If staff know that if they need a day off, they can have one, you can plan the workload around that absence far easier in advance. Secondly, most people only have a few important days a year. Thirdly, you have ample time to bring in back up staff.

Best regards
Alec Jezewski