How does absenteeism and “Spanish monkey business” affect productivity in companies?

Every time I read a financial paper, I come across press that continues to remind us all of the productivity gap between Spain and our neighbours, not to mention absenteeism which is much higher than the European average.

Given this information, it’s not surprising we’d tie one thing in with the other. If we do, we can deduce that managing the two main forms of absenteeism, physical and mental non-attendance should help increase productivity perceptibly in our organizations.

What is absenteeism?

Traditionally absenteeism we refer to as physical non-attendance is defined as a person’s total physical unavailability during working hours within the legally stipulated work day. Real measurement of absenteeism is a relation between the number of hours lost and the number of possible working hours for a given period of reference.

In contrast, the kind of absenteeism which has been called mental non-attendance or “presenteeism” we can define as the functional absence of the employee while performing tasks, because although he is physically present, he is dedicated to other tasks or none.

Both types of absenteeism are clearly and directly related to a drop in productivity in organizations.

How can we manage absenteeism?

On the one hand, to manage this we need to have upfront all the information with as much detail as possible. For this, it is important to measure the absenteeism rates in our organization based on all the criteria that help us to analyse the root of the associated problem. It is vital to record this information, segment it by absence type and cross it against criteria such as organizational (work centre, job) and personal (gender, age) factors, calendar distribution (month of year, day of week), family dependencies (ascendants and descendants), etc.

Indicators giving us this information ease diagnosis and monitoring on absenteeism issues in our organization. The conclusions derived from these will consequently pave the way for taking steps to reduce absenteeism.

On the other hand, to make “adjustments”, analysis by absence type and the capacity to zero into specific problems are crucial.

In this phase, it is important to distinguish between manageable and non manageable absenteeism (non-manageable would be, for example, leave due to maternity or severe illness). The main areas we can work on are basically in labour risk, demotivation and suspicions of fraud. Based on the cases detected in each area, prevention measures, HR management policies and legal steps will be applied as deemed appropriate. Let’s not forget that this only produces positive results when the initiatives adopted don’t just enforce or sanction, but also include motivational steps to increase the employee’s commitment to work.

Among best practices in absenteeism management, what’s worth mentioning is the relevance of decentralizing some tasks in the Human Resources department and passing them on to middle management, including monitoring absenteeism rates in each of their areas of mandate. This way each problem can be individually tackled in each business unit close up as needed. For instance, to find out how an employee’s health is, it is more effective to call the immediate boss, rather than handle through Human Resources.

Spanish monkey business

Just as with analyses on low productivity in Spain, in the domain of absenteeism we find similar cultural factors come into play together with the typical Spanish monkeying about.

These factors drive certain employees to put much effort into seemingly working lots rather than making the day productive. Why is nobody scandalized when hearing someone talk of taking a “sickie”? Such incidences occurring daily in our organizations make companies only look out for today and into the rear mirror of the past, instead of investing in mid-term improvements.It is crucial to reinforce corporate culture to counter this legacy; again middle management should take on this effort to reach out to those under their charge. The actions they need to undertake should include two key aspects as well as implementing specific improvements in absenteeism management. One is evaluation and compensation for productive results based on hours worked. And the other is to transmit the vision of the cathedral under construction to whoever is polishing the stone, that is to say, to ensure all workers feel engaged in the daily construction of the global mission of the company.