#384 Dealing with Absenteeism

Dealing with Absenteeism

Modern and sustainable concepts

Absenteeism is on the rise.

Many organisations already have to face up to this reality. Most of the time, however, the discourse is dominated by criticism, suspicion and judgement of individuals. The absenteeism rate is indeed rising. It currently averages just over 15 days per year, a quarter more sick days than in 2021. For civil servants, it is even almost 22 days per year. The causes are complex and need to be addressed in a structured and targeted manner.

How can you achieve this in your organisation?

Reasons

The increase in mental illnesses is a significant factor in the number of days of absence, primarily as these illnesses usually result in absences lasting several months. Musculoskeletal disorders are also on the rise, often due to the working environment. Due to the ageing of society and the workforce, cases of illness are occurring more frequently. The perception of illness and the need not to go to work sick is also much more present. The electronic doctor certificate allows all data to be recorded and analysed in full for the first time. Informally accepted absences not previously recorded are now included in the database. Long-term illnesses and how they are dealt with are another factor. Above all, however, poor management and catastrophic leadership are the main reasons for absenteeism. For example, Prof Dr Volker Nürnberg has already researched that sickness absence in departments with poor leaders follows them from one organisation to the next. This factor must, therefore, be addressed. According to CMI, the Chartered Management Institute in London, 81% of all managers have not received any leadership training and are, therefore, very likely to cause massive damage to the organisation.

Behaviour

However, unacceptable behaviour from various quarters is also part of the equation. To find a solution, this behaviour needs to be addressed and corrected. When a trainee was ill, a manager in one company had nothing better in mind than to write via WhatsApp that calling in sick because of a fever was unacceptable. This manager stated that any fever could be regulated with tea and ibuprofen. The manager added that they would consider dismissal if this happened again. At the time, the trainee had only taken one sick day a year. Abusive behaviour through communication or even home visits has previously damaged brands such as Tesla, which practised this with a sickness rate of 15% in some cases.

Of course, it is often assumed that certain doctors recklessly issue sick notes. Prof Dr Volker Nürnberg also argues in favour of budgeting the number of sick notes per doctor, as some doctors show conspicuously high deviating figures. However, the number of such doctors is small, so this is not a widespread problem.

It is not realistic to believe that more requirements, more harassment and more control will lead to a lower sickness rate. The opposite is the case.

Improvement

To improve the situation, you need a company health management programme. This proactive approach ensures that offers, usually tax-deductible for the organisation, promote health and reduce sickness rates. Make sure that the health programme fits the target clientele. A work bike won't help if the journey is 40 kilometres long; nobody will go to a remote, cheap gym because you have chosen it, and nobody will let you dictate their eating habits as an adult. It is, therefore, essential to proactively make an outstanding and suitable selection for an adequate offer.

Then, investigate whether you can organise your working hours better. How can you integrate the required working hours as seamlessly as possible into the reality of the employee's life? Emotional derailments or accusations that this didn't exist in the past are out of place here. Consider whether you can organise the work better in terms of time, location, and quantity (more on these topics in this week's podcast; see links below).

To counteract the shortage of skilled labour, you also need to offer learning opportunities. Employees who constantly have conflicts with customers and cannot resolve them will leave the organisation. Conflict management and customer service training can help here quickly and effectively — this is just one of many examples. Every day, people make a bedside decision in the morning: If in doubt, do you go to work, or do you call in sick? The decision mainly relies on the factors mentioned here.

Conclusion: proactive offers for a better working environment help massively to tackle absenteeism at its core.

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More on this topic in this week's podcast: Apple Podcasts / Spotify
See below for the Podcast Transcript.

Is excellent leadership important to you?

Let's have a chat: NB@NB-Networks.com

Contact: Niels Brabandt on LinkedIn

Website: www.NB-Networks.biz

Niels Brabandt is an expert in sustainable leadership with more than 20 years of experience in practice and science.

Niels Brabandt: Professional Training, Speaking, Coaching, Consulting, Mentoring, Project & Interim Management. Event host, MC, moderator.

Podcast Transcript

Speaker: Niels Brabandt

Someone called in sick today. Maybe you got used to that feeling in the recent past because you probably felt so far that absenteeism went up. However, even if we look at the facts, absenteeism went up. We we need modern and sustainable approaches to get hold of the situation. There's a lot of work to do at the moment. However, when we look into how many people call in sick on average, we have 15.1 days on average where people call in sick per year.

That's 1 quarter more than in 2021. So quite a development here. It's even 21 point 6 days per year in public service. There are, of course, many different reasons for that, and there are many different reasons why people call in sick. However, we need to talk about the situation, do a root cause analysis here, and then decide how to deal with the situation. So first, of course, we need to talk about what are the reasons why suddenly all of a sudden as many people say suddenly after the pandemic, more people call in sick and it feels like nothing has changed. Pandemic is over.

We get back to work. Why do suddenly people call in sick way more than they did before? So first, we have a strong rise in mental illnesses and these mental illnesses first we have a new perception about these. We see the importance of them. Back in the days, we just push people through with horrific consequences but we also have better diagnostics. So we see a lot more. We have more awareness on the situation.

So people dare to call and seek rather than to just push through with unforeseeable consequences whatsoever. In addition to that, we have more muscular and skeletal diseases and at the same time, that is not too surprising when you look into demographics, you know, that society in average is overaged. We have a strongly aging society, less young people get into the market compared to the aging workforce we have, and surprise surprise an aging workforce has more sick days than a younger one. That is not too surprising that is just something which obviously happens. Of course, we have a different perception since the pandemic. When should we call in sick? When should we avoid to have contact with people?

Remember the days when people were praised when they were sick, but they went to work. How how brilliant their work ethic was. And when when we look at the facts, what they basically did was just pushing cross cross contamination through the whole organization. So one person being sick basically put their illness on 10 others so we had more sick leave afterwards. And of course, we also have a better tracking of when people do call in sick. Remember when you probably work in a smaller organization, when you called in sick for a day or 2, there was no documentation on that. People just moved on, probably hours weren't even tracked.

Today, we have a tracking of basically anything. Basically, how how often did you work? How long did you work?

How many hours? When did you call in sick? Everything is tracked digitally and that means we have very clear data. So it's not really that we have more people calling in sick in general, we just have better tracking. However, during the last years with the content digital tracking, we can see that now more people call and say, well in the beginning it was just a feeling. In addition to that, we have more long term illnesses and of course, now there is more understanding that you need to properly cure them rather than just return to work and hope that you don't drop the head during working. And in addition to that, when we look at the research from professor doctor Volker Nuremberg.

And professor doctor Volker Nuremberg in Germany said, and he wasn't popular with that. When I was the host, when I was hosting the Employers Association meeting 28th May this year, Then he said during his speech, and believe me he wasn't popular with that. He said, any organization has the level of absenteeism they deserve. And of course, that's not what people like to hear. What people like to hear was that anyone is just lazy, but that's just not the case. He said that he tracked down bad leadership. He looked at certain people and he took the German automotive industry as an example.

He took managers who had 8% absenteeism in their department, but then they switched jobs. So for example, they moved from Wolfsburg to, let's say, Ingolstadt from one car producer to another. And these 8% sick leave, they now left the department and they moved somewhere else. And the department they took over had 2%. 2% absenteeism rate, so pretty low. When this leader took over that department, 1 year later, the absenteeism rate in that department went from 2% to 8% as well. So bad leadership moves along with absenteeism rates.

And just to add that, 81%, we talked about that before on this podcast, 81%, according to CMI, the Chartered Management Institute in London. 81% of all leaders had 0 minutes of leadership training. And just to tell you, no matter what your organization does, you wouldn't allow anyone to do anything in your organization without proper training. If you, for example, sell cars and I would show up at your doorstep and say, look, I didn't do professional training or engineering studies. That's just not for me. I just like cars. Do you have a job for me?

Can I design cars, please? You would say, that's just not enough. You need more substance to that. And that's exactly what we need in professional leadership as well. Unfortunately unfortunately, that is not the case as of yet. It's changing slowly because people realize more and more that leaders need to be trained professionally, and we need to give them the time and also put budgets there and then give them professional training. The $49 online class about leadership is not gonna make is not gonna make the customer is not not gonna get you anywhere.

And professional leadership training, of course, first takes time. It's not a 2 day class.

It takes longer. And, of course, it costs money. And the time, of course, cost money as well. However, making people leave and making people so frustrated that they prefer to call in sick, that is what costs money as well. So it's better to invest it in sustainable leadership. However, we have to look on both sides of the game. We have certain situations and now I get to the reason why we have this episode this week.

I received an email from someone who is listening to this podcast, sending me a proof about a text that their daughter who's now doing vocational training at the moment received on their mobile phone after she called in sick. Just to give you the background, the daughter so far this year had one day of sick leave. So this is the 2nd time they call in sick. One day in sick leave they had at the beginning of the year, and now they had 2 additional days. And the business is highly relying on staff being on-site right now. It's a business which is heavily relying on Christmas business. So now basically, it's main season, very stressful time.

So the leader texted that person, and I'm going to leave out the name for obvious reasons. So it says hello and then the name, followed by it's not okay to call in sick when you are trainee here. When you have a cold and fever, just take some Ibuprofen and drink some tea. That's going to help anyway. And also, this is going to harm your professional training and your vocational training here. If this calling in sick happens again, we seriously have to consider firing you. Please take this seriously and be aware of your accountability.

Please talk to and then there's a name mentioned and the time where they suggest to talk, and then there's the name of the leader below that. And I have to say, are you out of your mind texting something like that when someone calls in sick? So first, in almost any country that is illegal. Straightforward illegal to text them. 2nd, do you think that anyone receiving this text now says, oh, what a brilliant organization to work for? And 3rd, do you think that anyone would now say, oh, thank you very much for the text. Now when you text that I'm not going to be sick anymore, especially when it's a person that hardly had any sick days so far whatsoever.

This unacceptable pressure is is a tendency we see here. We have this at Tesla in Germany as well where suddenly one of the people leading a department suddenly visited people at their homes checking if they were really sick because Tesla had about 15% absenteeism rate. They were sending text and WhatsApp messages checking if people were really sick. What you communicate here is a massive level of mistrust. You do not trust your people when you text anything like that. And just to make it unambiguously clear here, because very quickly some people would say, oh, this podcast, just another leftist person telling me what to do because you think it's always the no. No. No. There are two sides to the metal.

When when we look on the other side of the game, there's the so called dog holiday effect. And the dog holiday effect is that and that's something where professor doctor Volker Norenberg also looked into. Some doctors in the country have an unusual rate of signing people in for sick leave. And so far, there's no regulation that can prevent for they that can prevent them from doing so. Everything with doctors is regulated. There's a budget for everything, for the amount of treatments, for the amount of medication. Anything is budgeted.

However, it's not budget how many people can be signed in for sick leave. And that is something where they're looking into right now. However, it will take some time to get some regulation in there. As long as this is the case, the the the assumption of innocence applies. And by the way, I'm a self employed entrepreneur. I own my business. I'm when you look at me politically, you find me in the liberal conservative spectrum.

So I'm not someone who is left wing telling you that it's always our fault. No. It's not always our fault. However, quite often it is. These kind of talks and often when you not only send these texts, but then then then invite people to have a chat with them. These kind of talks and I give you an example here. One company invited every single person that had more than 3 days of sick leave at the end of the year to a personal talk where they simply said, so what's going on in your life that you are sick that often?

When this is your approach, it's nothing else than some sort of psychological terror situation you're putting there, and that is not helping anyone. Because when someone is sick, it remains a private matter. You have access to the data as far as you see it, but not more than the law allows you. You can be frustrated with that and believe me sometimes I am as well. However, we cannot wildly overstep the mark and then wonder when the other side does the same. We have to act better than that.

So how can we be better? Because there is a certain effect we need to prevent. So first, what you need to have is you need to have active management of health. And when you think, how can I do that? Because some people are healthy and some people are not that healthy. And, of course, you can take it that way. However, when you think of what is the offer you can actually make.

So what is the offer you can make to probably take care that maybe that maybe your employees will be, let's say, more healthy. And very important here, it always needs to fit to the situation that is available in you and realistic text deduct on your accounts. So it's not only a business expense that is just gone, you can lower the amount of profit you have to report to authorities, to financial authorities, lower your tax rate by that. So it really pays off and of course about human beings, it's good for you and it's good for the employees, it's good for the organization. Having this proactive health management in place is a good thing. However, when I see an organization that is something which happened in Germany with one of my clients, they offer the so called job bikes. So tax deductible people can have a bike to go to the job and back.

However, it was a very rural, a very rural, not urban, not suburban, it was rural where the country was located and many people drove 25 miles and more per trip to work and back. It's highly unlikely that people say thank you very much for the bike. I'm not gonna ride, and I I'm not I'm now going to ride my bike 25 miles back and forth. By the way, some people actually did. However, these were the people who already had sports as their main part of private lifestyle. So you're supporting the ones who are already doing very well. So look at what can you offer if it's a membership to the gym, if it's healthier food, if it's some sign of some sort of coach you have, how to sit properly on a chair, how to relax your back, how you can walk properly, how can strengthen your back, whatever it is.

Help people with their health. Second aspect, you need to be more flexible with the with your working time models. And when I mean flexible is you have to look into what is people's private life and how can I adapt my work to their private life? And I already can see people yelling at me, why should I do that? I didn't have it when I was younger. And believe me, when I entered the job market in the 19 nineties, I didn't do as well. When I entered the job market, high unemployment in Germany was the was just the the the omnipresent case, and your employer basically said, okay. Look. This is the work, and your private life has to align around that.

Hint, these days are over. And, again, 2nd time in a row, by the way, greetings go to Northern Germany to a company, and this this company is listening to this podcast right now.

I I I I know that. When you, for example, have someone who has a reasonably high number of children, way amongst the average, which by the way for demographics is extremely good. So when you have people who are highly qualified, who work in highly qualified jobs and then decide to have more children, that's a good thing for society. We should all support that. And when this person says, hey. Due to kindergarten and school, I cannot do the 7 AM help desk. I just can't.

I know that we all set at 8 AM, and usually once per week, I have to catch up and be there at 7. I just can't. And the team steps up and says, look, mate. No problem. We catch up with the 7 AM thing. However, you then do the afternoon shifts.

You you do the afternoon. And, of course, they immediately agreed. Very important is you have to adapt your working models to the lives of the people in your organization. Because if you don't do, people will make it happen that their work life will somehow, let's say, adapt in a nonvoluntary way. So look at your time models. Can you be more flexible than you are? So first aspect here is time.

2nd aspect is the location. Can you offer, for example, work from home or work from anywhere? That people can work, for example, from outside the country when they go on a trip with their children? Or, for example, can can you offer workations that they can align their their vacations together with their families so they can do a bit more just, but then still work from there? Is there anything you can offer? Is there probably something where you can say people can work less during one part of the year a bit more on the other part of the year. So it aligns with the seasons of school, for example.

Is that possible? If so, please do it. You need to also proactively engage with the lack of talent we have right now. The lack of talent, by the way, has many reasons. It's not because all people are stupid. We have a strong focus on tuition fees going up, cost of living goes up, rent goes up, anything goes up, and you wonder why less people spend time in professional training and professional education. But because they can't afford it anymore as the tendency is to say to telling you right now.

So you have to engage with that. People are, for example, stressed out when they have constant customer conflict, and they don't know how to handle it. And the same company tells me, we don't have money and we don't have time for professional conflict management training. And at the same time you complain about employee turnover and the lack of talent plus a bad employer image on the market. Do you hear yourself talking? So look at a proactive health management, look at flexible working models about time, about location, about the amount of hours when they need to be spent and worked off. And then look at how to approach the skills gap that you have proactively because people will work better and be stressed a lot less when they know how to do things properly.

From communication to conflict management training to leadership training to project management training and whatnot. People love to know what they do because what people do when it really comes to a moment of truth. Let's and that's by the way what what professor doctor Volker Nurnberg, who's by the way an excellent speaker, I highly recommend him for your event as well. Very insightful, also very entertaining here. What people do is the so called edge of bad decision. They get up in the morning and let's say they didn't sleep too well. They look out of the window and it's snowing or raining sideways.

So they think, wow, that's not the best day. Look on look on the thermometer and you see, well, the temperature today is probably around the 0 degree mark. And they are thinking, what do I do next? And when they say, hey, I have an amazing leader, I have a brilliant team, and I just get up, go to work, and we make this happen because it is worth it. However, when people say, ungrateful organization, horrible colleagues, no one knows what they're doing, no one got professionally trained, and my leader, so called leader, is an absolute catastrophe from start to finish, then people will say, look, it's Friday morning and my weekend starts right now because their edge of bad decision then will be I go to bed if you like it or not. Summing this all up, proactive health management will always help you to lower the absenteeism rate, to strengthen employee motivation, and at the same time lower absenteeism and also lower employee turnover, which will save you money on all ends. Plus, it gives you an amazing reputation on the on the job market and immediately you can save money on recruiting.

So it's a win win win situation no matter if it's for you, if it's for the organization of the employer, or if it's for the employee, the team member, the people work for you. So you better start right now, and I wish you all the best doing so. And when you now say, that's a lot. Yes. It is. If you have any kind of ideas, questions, anything you'd like to talk about, just drop me an email. Nbnbhyphennetworks. com. I'm happy to discuss any kind of questions you have.

When, of course, you say, hey. We need something very specific, training, speaking, coaching, whatever else, then, of course, I'm happy to talk about that as well. You find my email address in the show notes of this podcast just below this podcast. I also put my LinkedIn there so feel free to connect with me on there. You can also go to my website nbhyphenetworks. biz. There's also the transcript of this podcast on the website as well.

The second aspect which I always highly recommend is because we have live sessions. Often people ask, oh, do you have live sessions? Yes. We do. And feel free to register for 1. It's quite simple. When you go to expert.nbhyphennetworks.com.

Put your email address in there. You only receive one email every Wednesday morning. It's a 100% content at free guarantee. You get free access to all the podcast, the full archive, 400 episodes almost. You get free access to all the articles in writing if you need to forward something to maybe your leader or send to someone else. Again here full archive, no payroll when you find it somewhere else there might be payroll via this track, via this way, via the email there is no payroll whatsoever and there's always the next date and time for the next live session. We do once a month at least and they were very well visited recently.

Available by the way in English and German. So feel free to bring your international colleagues with you and I see you there. The third aspect, however, is the most important one. Apply, apply, apply what you heard on this podcast because only when you apply what you heard, you will see the positive outcomes that you obviously want to see in your organization. I wish you all the best doing so. If you need any kind of help, feel free to contact me.

I'm available 247. And at the end of the podcast, there's only one thing left for me to say.

Thank you very much for your time.