Employee Time and Attendance

Additional data pieces useful to assess in the employee population are the number and reasons for employee absenteeism. This information can help identify appropriate interventions to address the health issues that may be resulting in higher rates of absenteeism and can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of those interventions.

A successful intervention that improves employee health should also result in higher productivity and reduced number of work days missed, which will ultimately reduce organizational costs.

This information is often available from a Human Resources (HR) representative. Both pre- and post-assessment of productivity measures and absenteeism can be conducted to assess program impact.

Variables of interest when examining time and attendance data include:

• Number of sick days or sick hours and the reason for absence
  • How detailed is the reason for absence?
  • Does it distinguish between an employee who is sick or an employee who took a sick day to care for an ill child?
• Other excused or unexcused absence like jury duty, family and medical leave, doctor appointments, vacation days, personal days
  • Determine the amount of unused vacation days per employee.
  • Are employees leaving paid time off on the table?
• Determine the level of overtime worked – high levels of overtime may signal rises in stress, fatigue, etc.
• Track absenteeism over time to determine any trends or changes in absenteeism rates such as higher levels of absences around cold and influenza season. Use that information for planning interventions or policy changes such as flu shots
• Understand the company’s attendance policy. Some companies use point systems for attendance. Employees who are absent frequently receive points which are associated with consequences. Having a point system may encourage an employee to come to work sick or force the employee to use their vacation time when ill so they do not accrue additional points. This illness may not be captured in the absenteeism data. Analyzing employee awareness of attendance and absenteeism policies is important as policies may impact employee behavior