Sick leave abuse: Are your employees taking unplanned leaves frequently?

Posted by Alen Parker on July 3rd, 2019

Have you ever felt that the employees are getting ill too often, that too either for a day or on a stretch? Well, you must have! While we are not denying that some employees do have a poor immune system and are really sensitive, but some, without any denial, are merely using their casual and sick leaves in vain. They make excuses of being sick to take leaves. Even the survey says it out and loud that more than 77% of workers don't have any chronic disease. These unplanned and unscheduled leaves become a reason for lost productivity, skipped deadlines, low productivity, little morale, and a lot more. All in all, on the company, the impact is negative.

Here is more about what it is, what can be done to deal with it. Let us begin.

Sick leaves are necessary

To deal with the issue of sick leave abuse, you cannot eliminate this altogether. There are times when your employees may actually face health problems, illness. If they will not have leaves at this time, morale and productivity will lower down. This will also affect the health of employees sitting around him which will ultimately lead to more loss of productivity. When employees will come even when they are sick to work, it will be known as presenteeism. This will result in a bad work culture altogether. You should allow them to take leaves but use attendance management software to keep a track of leaves availed so as to warn the employee against the misuse.

What to do when it is a sick leave abuse?

When an employee violates the attendance policy of the organisation on several occasions, it is considered sick leave abuse. So, in order to bring everything in discipline, employees should be warned verbally. If that doesn’t suffice, you should issue a warning in writing. If you want to skip doing all this, you should keep your attendance policy in place. Make the action plan after the sick leave abuse very clear, even if it includes termination.

When is an employee violating attendance policy?

Employees can be violating the attendance policy in various ways. Basically, whenever they are not following the attendance policy you have in your attendance management software, they are violating the policies.

You need to identify the problem and then take action against it before it increases even more. You can come up with an incentive plan for those who use fewer leaves. Besides, you can also allow part-time paid off to make employees take less leave. Employees that use sick leave rightfully may feel the pressure to report even when they are ill, this can result in increased health costs. So, it is best to see the current policies and develop ideas accordingly. So, now that you know that there isn’t a defined way to stop sick abuse, you know how you can stop the same in a few ways. Now you can think of some more that may work in your organisation.