Mary was furious with Paul, one of the customer service phone reps she supervised. He had called in sick again, forcing the other employees to pick up the slack. Paul was averaging one sick day every two weeks. It simply wasn't fair. "Please get Paul on the phone for me," Mary said to one of her staff.
As she sat angrily at her desk, she thought about how she would let Paul have it for showing so little respect for his colleagues. But then she had a sudden doubt. What, legally, could she say to Paul? Would 1. Provide outlets for dissent. Not all absenteeism is capricious. When people are denied outlets for their job pressures, they tend to run from them. Managers or supervisors who don't tolerate complaints force employees to bottle up pressures, which build up over time. If you make dissent possible by encouraging people to speak up, hearing them out and, where feasible, acting on what you hear, they learn that they don't have to escape from the workplace to let off steam.
2. Cut the drag of boring work. You can't eliminate boring work. But you can try to reduce a person's need to flee from it. Here are two suggestions to consider:
* Expand boring jobs so that employees can see their tasks through to a worthwhile result. Giving work a beginning, a middle and an end increases at least threefold the satisfaction to be gained from it.
* Break down boring jobs into smaller pieces so that a variety of tasks can be distributed among more people. Diversifying each person's job makes the work a little more interesting and a little less boring and time-consuming.
3. Use incentives. Extra pay for showing up is not a radical idea, and it's relatively cheap. The concept of "well pay" instead of sick pay has proved itself and can be easily adopted. For example, for each authorized (paid) sick day people do not use by year's end, they get paid for a day and a half. Or let employees bank sick time to be used against a future disability. These kinds of arrangements can be a magnet to the workplace.
4. Try gimmicks. They're only good for the short term, but they're also reusable from time to time. Try a departmental contest. For example, the person with the lowest number of absences in a three-month period wins a gift card. Use gimmicks sparingly, but play them up when you do. And make them fun, not work: Don't ask people to do anything except come to work on time.
5. Explain how absenteeism affects everyone. When people feel easily replaceable, they think they won't be missed. If you tell them why they're needed, they won't want to stay away. Each employee is in some way a specialist; taking the time to point this out makes each one feel skilled, valued and needed.