Survey shows decline in worker absenteeism
Stress-related absences triple since 1995
The good news is that unscheduled workplace absenteeism declined in the United States in 1999. The bad news? Many observers don’t expect that to become a permanent trend.
Those are among the major findings in the 1999 CCH Unscheduled Absence Survey, conducted by Riverwoods, IL-based CCH Inc., a provider of tax and business law information and software for human resources, accounting, legal, securities, health care, banking, and small business professionals.
The findings
The survey, now in its ninth year, interviewed 305 human resources executives in U.S. companies and organizations of all sizes and across major industry segments, with an estimated total of nearly 800,000 employees. Among the major findings:
• There was a 7% decline in unscheduled absenteeism in 1999, a step forward against 1998’s all-time high.
• The dollars lost to absenteeism decreased 20%.
• Absenteeism caused by worker stress has tripled since 1995.
• Mid-sized companies struggled with absenteeism, while small businesses showed a significant drop.
• Absenteeism in health care reached an all-time high.
• Industry sector and company size had a significant influence on absenteeism.
• Personal illness and family issues were the most-cited reasons for last-minute absences, but stress and "entitlement mentality" reached all-time highs for the second straight year.
(For a further statistical breakdown, see the chart on p. 22.)
Not a time to celebrate
Despite some positive results in the 1999 survey, "it’s not time to put on our party hats," warns Nancy Kaylor, the human resources analyst who has directed CCH’s annual survey for the past three years. "Certainly, the human resources executives we talked to don’t hold out any great hopes for this [decline in absenteeism] to continue. They see it as a very small drop, perhaps even a course correction, but the news is not really that great; no one feels we should go out and start celebrating."
One of the reasons is that unscheduled absenteeism continues to cost employers millions of dollars — an average of $602 per employee per year, in fact, according to CCH. "Unscheduled absences really go to the bottom line," says Kaylor. "Ironically, there are a lot of little things employers can do to get employees to work and to save big bucks in the long term."
And, she points out, employers have put off these strategies (i.e., work-family programs, paid time off policies) for so long they’ve painted themselves into a box. "Businesses have ignored the problem for as long as possible. They’ve cut everything else, they’ve downsized, re-organized, and so on," Kaylor notes. "Now, when the employment market is so tight and in many cases there aren’t enough employees to go around, it’s imperative that the ones you have hired get to the office."
Ironically, just when it’s so important to get employees to work, two key factors in absenteeism are growing. Stress — perhaps the more obvious of the two — is a widely recognized result of corporate downsizing. Perhaps nowhere are its effects more dramatically visible than in the health care industry, where absenteeism reached an all-time high in 1999.
"Behind this increase is an industry in a state of flux and change, impacted by regulatory issues and extreme labor shortages," notes Kaylor.
The other dynamic, "entitlement mentality," Is manifested by a "you owe me" attitude on the part of the employee. "What they say to themselves is, I’ve been working and working, doing more with less, and I’ve had it. I’m going to call in sick,’" Kaylor explains.
Boosting productivity
Kaylor asserts that work-life programming and paid time off strategies are the most effective ways to combat both of these threats to productivity.
For example, the banking industry showed significant improvement in unscheduled absences in 1999, and Kaylor is convinced this is due to improved work/life benefits. "They have really been moving in a big way towards work/life programming and flexible benefits," she explains. "As the proportion of women who have climbed up the corporate ladder have increased, so has the need for more dependent care and other services. The industry has responded because that’s who their workers are. The most successful employers are those who know who their employees are and what matters."
The same holds true, she says, for PTO (paid time off) programs, which provide employees with a "bank" of hours to be used for various purposes, rather than separating out sick, vacation, and personal time. "With a paid leave bank, workers are able to schedule the time off and they don’t have to tell that little fib when they call in. Plus, the super or the manager can plan for the person not being there," Kaylor explains. "The employees are managing their own time, so there’s less of an entitlement mentality; they are being treated more like business partners. Whereas, if you have X’ number of vacation days, personal days, and sick days, many employees will tend to take them all."
The PTO payoff
The only employees who tend to be hurt by PTO programs, adds Kaylor, are chronic sick time users.
Work/life programs, Kaylor adds, are an acknowledgement by the company that "the whole juggling act is getting tougher and tougher." As more and more companies do acknowledge this trend, they are seeing a payoff by offering such benefits, she asserts. "The types of companies who are offering such programs to employees are trying to meet them halfway — to find ways to make it possible for employees to get to the workplace and be productive."
The continued threat of unscheduled absences, combined with an extremely tight labor market, will result in an increase in such programming, Kaylor predicts. "They will not just be something that is nice to do, but that companies will have to do. Wellness, EAPs, flexible scheduling — all of these will become more of a business necessity."
[For more information, contact: Nancy Kaylor, CCH Inc., 2700 Lake Cook Road. Riverwoods, IL, 60015-3888. Telephone: (847)267-7000. Web site: www.cch.com.]
You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
- Award-winning Medical Content
- Latest Advances & Development in Medicine
- Unbiased Content