No matter the business, employee absenteeism is a disruptive threat that can leave your teams overburdened and result in a reduction to overall productivity. While a single employee missing work once or twice a year isn’t too much of an issue, the disruption caused by every absent employee or employees on sick leave will add up over time into something far more serious.
According to a report by Centre of Economic and Business Research, employee absenteeism is set to cost the UK economy £21bn in 2020 alone. Therefore, it’s essential that businesses do what they can to mitigate their exposure to the risks that come with having employees on sick leave.
If you’d like to take the first step in employee absence management, discover how an online assistant will help your business to handle an unexpectedly higher workload. To learn more about how our experienced online assistant at Timewise VA can help your company today, please don’t hesitate to contact our team now.
How can employees on sick leave impact your business?
The most obvious negative effect that absent employees will have on your business is the sudden drop in productivity. But, in turn this will impact your bottom line and could cause a lapse in customer and employee satisfaction.
Depending on the length of time an employee is absent, your company may need to hire in staff in order to ease the burden on teams. Additionally, these costs could be even higher if your HR department is unable to find temporary contract workers and need to pay your existing employees overtime instead.
Lastly, improper absence management can leave your employees feeling low in morale which further impacts productivity as well as employee retention. Thankfully, an online assistant among can help to alleviate some of the additional pressures that impact businesses from employees on sick leave.
What’s the best way to reduce employee absenteeism?
Employee absenteeism is often going to be the result of legitimate causes, but there will also be times when it is not. To help reduce the illegitimate sick days among employees, some companies have moved towards a policy of having a limited number of paid days of sick leave per year.
On the opposite side of the same coin, some companies implement fully fledged incentive programmes to ensure employees come to work as much as possible. But, there’s also the potential for your business to offer professional support in order to assist employees dealing with economic, family, psychological, or health issues too.
How can you mitigate the negative effects of employees on sick leave?
While it’s entirely possible to create an absence management policy for your company, you’ll need to deal with sick employees from time to time. As previously mentioned, one of the most significant impacts of absenteeism is how it can overburden your teams and lower productivity.
Thankfully, a virtual assistant can offer your business a cost-effective way to lessen the workload in your office. Whether it be admin work, proofreading, Word processing, or Excel spreadsheet design and updates, our virtual assistant in Manchester is here to assist your business today or whenever you require.
So, please take the time to learn more about your competitively priced range of virtual assistant services or contact our friendly team at TimeWise VA today.